By editorial@silicon.com, 14 March 2001 14:25
NEWS Trafficmaster, which provides traffic information over a UK-wide network, originally held a licensing deal with the mobile giant, taken over by Vodafone last year, but has since accused the German company of providing too poor a service. Through a joint company, Mannesmann Passo, the German telco was supposed to build a network over 8,000km of autobahn to install Trafficmaster's traffic detection technology. However, a spokesman for Trafficemaster says the company is now in discussions with Mannesmann about the future of their jointly owned company. Commenting on the relationship, a spokesman for Trafficmaster said: "The joint company was going to provide information for the licensing network but we were not happy with the quality. Mannesmann didn't finish the work as it was not capable of delivering the high quality service that we are used to." Trafficmaster's varied results, which revealed a spectacular drop in pre-tax profits from £3.8m for 1999 to just £434,000, coincided with an announcement outlining a non-exclusive agreement with Palm to deliver traffic information on handheld computers via the internet. Trafficmaster's revenue figures for 2000 dropped from £15.1m for the previous year to £13.5m, which the company says had been influenced by ending a licensing agreement with Mannesmann, Trafficmaster has raised £66m from a placing of shares in November 1999, which it plans to use to complete its own German network as well as fund further European expansion in France and Italy.
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