UNIFIED UK PHONE PARKING SCHEME ANNOUNCED

Through the acquisition Parkmobile UK Ltd and RingGo have entered a formal data-sharing and co-licensing agreement. The result will be to make phone parking work far more smoothly for motorists across large areas of the UK.

This development creates the UK’s largest phone parking service which encompasses a total of 80 local authorities - more than double the 37 operated by Paybyphone, the nearest competitor.

Jointly announcing the development, Peter O’Driscoll of Parkmobile UK and Harry Clarke of RingGo outlined the rationale. “Local authorities clearly want choice and the benefit of competition between suppliers to get keen pricing,” explains O’Driscoll. “But motorists aren’t really interested in that. All
our research in this area tells us one thing - motorists want the simplicity of encountering a single phone parking service in their daily lives, and they want a good one. The bother of having different phone numbers, websites and smart phone applications is something motorists can very usefully do
without, and it reduces overall use of phone parking.”

The two companies have agreed a commercial model by which each company deploys the service provided by the other under licence. What this simply means is that existing local authorities across large areas of the country, notably the south west of England, south Central England, Kent, and south and west London, will operate the same phone parking service.

“But that’s not all,” says Clarke, “we have also decided to share registration data. As we all know, it can take a few minutes for a motorist to register with a phone parking service and it’s necessary to keep the customer’s details maintained, because payment cards inevitably expire. By sharing data, if
you have ever registered with Parkmobile you are now registered with RingGo. So, for example, all of the motorists registered with Parkmobile in Wandsworth will soon find themselves registered for RingGo in neighbouring Richmond too, saving them time and hassle.”

Local authority customers that have chosen RingGo or Parkmobile will continue to have the same service that they have chosen to enjoy. Their contracts will remain with the same companies and they will be billed just as before. Naturally we will collaborate in bidding for new business for the
benefit of our future clients.”

O’Driscoll explains. “This arrangement will mean that approaching 4 million UK motorists will soon find themselves registered to use the same phone parking service in 80 different local authorities. Large areas of interoperability that have been created in Kent, the South West, the Midlands and in the south and west of London will encourage the overall use of phone parking - including that of our competitors - which can only be good for the parking market as a whole.”