Company profile: Q-Free

Q-Free is a world-leading supplier of technology and products for Road User Charging (RUC) and Traffic Surveillance. Q-Free deliver products and systems globally to battle city congestion, pollution and help finance infrastructure. Q-Free was established in 1984 in Trondheim, Norway with subsidiaries in UK, Sweden, Portugal, France, Greece, Brazil, Thailand, Indonesia, Malaysia and Australia.

Our technology and systems have been constantly developed ever since 1984 and represents today state-of-the-art technology within the field of electronic toll collection and road pricing.

Among our largest projects are the national tolling systems for Norway and Portugal and the Stockholm Congestion Tax System. Norway and Portugal are considered the pioneers in the European market for advanced, ETC systems. Q-Free has delivered over 11 million OBUs and equipped 4000 lanes for the ETC market. Our reference sites  includes the Ecopoint system in Austria, roadside system for truck tolling in Switzerland, two Multi-Lane Free Flow (MLFF) systems in Sydney and more than 400 road side beacons for road operators in Brazil, Spain and France.

Q-Free ASA carries an AAA financial rating debt free with no overdraft. Q-Free has financed all prior projects from existing working capital funds. As for all previous projects, Q-Free will provide commensurate performance guarantees (typically in the form of secured bank guarantees) and insurance covers as required.

Our technology and systems have been constantly developed ever since 1984 and represents today state-of-the-art technology within the field of electronic toll collection and road pricing.

Among our largest projects are the national tolling systems for Norway and Portugal and the Stockholm Congestion Tax System. Norway and Portugal are considered the pioneers in the European market for advanced, ETC systems. Q-Free has delivered over 11 million OBUs and equipped 4000 lanes for the ETC market. Our reference sites  includes the Ecopoint system in Austria, roadside system for truck tolling in Switzerland, two Multi-Lane Free Flow (MLFF) systems in Sydney and more than 400 road side beacons for road operators in Brazil, Spain and France. 

Q-Free ASA carries an AAA financial rating debt free with no overdraft. Q-Free has financed all prior projects from existing working capital funds. As for all previous projects, Q-Free will provide commensurate performance guarantees (typically in the form of secured bank guarantees) and insurance covers as required.

History
1984: Company established under the name Micro Design.
1986: Contract with Statens Vegvesen (Norwegian Public Roads Adm.) for the development of the “Q-Free” system.
1990: Deployment of the Oslo Toll Ring
1991: Trondheim Toll Ring
1995: The “Q-Free” system installed in Portugal. First generation 5.8 GHz system for commercial use.
1997: The introduction of a common European standard for Electronic Toll Collection (ETC). Breakthrough in overseas markets.
1999: AutoPASS system awarded to Q-Free. Establishing offices in Brazil and Australia.
2002: IPO, listed at Oslo Stock Exchange
2003: Introduction of fully automatic tolling (tag and video/OCR)
2004: Award of contract for Stockholm Congestion Tax System (MLFF)
2005: Selected as one of two companies to test DSRC in London.
2005: Breakthrough in Italy, contract for DSRC Pilot Smart Card System
2006: Continuous growth, strong foothold in France.
2007: Contract awarded in Bangkok
2008: Frame agreement in London
2008: Q-Free acquires Dacolean & Building Capital
2008: MLFF for Sydney Harbour Tunnel go live
2009: Q-Free is awarded major MLFF contract in Portugal
2009: Q-Free wins contract to deliver Central System and Enforcement System for Truck Tolling project in Slovakia
2009: New contract signed in Bangkok with BECL

Q-Free system and products
Q-Free supplies stand alone products for integration as well as complete systems for turnkey delivery to our customers. Our ETC products and systems comprise single lane Dedicated Short Range Communication (DSRC) free flow equipment, multilane equipment and on board units. All our DSRC ETC equipment are compliant with the European CEN standard and national specifications such as the French TIS specification, MEDIA specification, Chilean DSRC specification, Australian DSCR Standard, AutoPASS specification in Norway and the PISTA specification. Our products are known for their high performance and high reliability.

Multi-lane Free Flow (MLFF)
For MLFF systems it is essential to have high capacity and high performance to register and detect vehicles no matter the vehicle speed, weather and environmental conditions. The Q-Free MLFF system is built around our DSRC transmitter and receiver beacons. The DSRC system communicates with each passing OBU and performs exact OBU lateral positioning on the road. Vehicle detection and classification is done using high sampling rate laser scanners which can separate motorbikes as well as detect the tow-bar between the truck and the trailer. Our high resolution digital video camera ensures high quality video pictures well suitable for further automatic number plate processing and recognition. Video images can be taken from front or rear or both.

Congestion charging
Our city solution is designed to fit into any city environment being a natural part of the city. The system consists of DSRC beacons for tag reading and OBU positioning. High resolution video cameras are used for vehicle detection, tracking and video enforcement with Automated Number Plate Recognition (ANPR). The video based vehicle detection and tracking system has high enough accuracy to secure correct income for the operator as a congestion charging system normally will consist of several charging points inside a charging zone.

Open and closed tolling
Open (fixed fee per charging point) and closed tolling (payment according to distance travelled) and are easily realised using our DSRC beacons and related lane controllers and toll plaza computers. A closed or open tolling system may also be combined with manual lanes. In a closed system time and place of the entry lane is written into the OBU. The information is read from the OBU in the exit lane and the price is calculated according to the distance travelled. The price is shown to the driver in real time on a road side display.

MTC and ETC
On some motorways Manual Toll Collection (MTC) and ETC lanes are often combined. The lanes can either be separate (which is more efficient for the ETC lanes) or mixed mode lanes. The lane can, dependent on the requirements, be equipped with vehicle classification systems as well as video enforcement and boom gates.

Back Office
All ETC transactions are collected from the toll plaza to one or more back office systems. The back office consists of a central server system and a client database enabling the toll operator to keep track of every subscriber’s toll usage. Often a call centre is connected to the back office for customer support and handling of inquiries. Payment of each user’s account is normally done by direct debit from bank account or the client’s credit card account. Several back offices may be connected together or to a main central to perform clearing between different operators.

ANPR (Automatic Number Plate Recognition)
Q-Free ASA purchased 70 % of the shares of Dacolian BV in 2008. Dacolian is an innovative Information and Communication Technology (ICT) company that concentrates its activities on the design of recognition software for the traffic and transportation market. The software has a strong emphasis on license plate recognition which can be used as an integrated part of Q-Free’s systems or as a stand alone solution. Vehicle identification by license plate recognition or vehicle shape matching is an emerging technology and is becoming a very cost effective solution for certain applications.

GNSS (Global Navigation Satellite System)
Q-Free acquired Building Capital Ltd in December 2008. Building Capital has references throughout Europe within Road User Charging in general, and GNSS (e.g. GPS) based solutions in particular.

Technology Neutral
In 2008, Q-Free confirmed its intention to be a technology neutral solution provider. The acquisition of Dacolian and Building Capital represents important steps in this direction.