Cell Phones Can Guide You Around Traffic Headaches

San Francisco, CA – October 27, 2004 – Orion Information Services (www.ois-inc.com) announced today that it is offering the first comprehensive traffic management system available using text messaging. Orion is offering this service in conjunction with TrafficCast (www.trafficcast.com). This is the only true national network that provides personalized, route-specific, real-time and predictive speed and travel time information. Unlike its competitors, this offering monitors traffic flows on all routes in major US cities, predicts traveling times, and factors in the effects that local weather patterns and special events will have on transit times.

Kristian Gjerding, the CEO of OIS, explained how it works: “Anyone equipped with a standard cell phone can use our system to receive predictive traffic information in real-time using standard text messaging (SMS). Once a motorist indicates his current location, we’ll provide detailed traffic information in that area – taking the local traffic, weather, and special events into account. Using text messaging offers commuters a simple, well known and very personal way of receiving this information.”

The traffic network covers 128 metro areas and more than 450,000 miles of roadways coast to coast including Interstate highways, other expressways, and major arterials. Travel time and best route predictions project every 15 minutes into the future. The system uses both government and private sector data; the companies will work with emerging vendors and data sources as they become available. Projected travel times are continuously verified to ensure accuracy and upgrade the predictive models.

Both OIS and TrafficCast believe there will be a rapid uptake of this offering not only among the commuter crowd, but also with business travelers, trucking firms, state DOTs, the military and others.

Services will launch at the end of next month.

About Orion Information Services

Orion Information Services (OIS) is a cross media company delivering profitable, engaging mobile content and services. Founded in 2002, this new breed of company provides our partners with innovative interactive services designed to keep pace with the ever-changing mobile world. Its cross-media services combine traditional media (television, radio and print) with the Internet and mobile consumer devices, such as mobile phones or palmtop units, to connect consumers to an entirely new world of wireless services.
Headquartered in Miami with offices in New York and LA, we are focused on the US and Latin American markets, and with a development office in Copenhagen Denmark we have secured access to the cutting edge wireless markets of the Nordic region. www.ois-inc.com

About TrafficCast

TrafficCast is the only firm that generates personalized, route-specific real-time and predictive traffic and travel time information for the entire United States. The firm provides current and predicted travel times for more than 400,000 miles coast to coast including Interstate highways, other expressways, and major arterials. By fusing historic traffic patterns, "live" traffic information, weather forecasts, construction and event schedules with accident reports, TrafficCast provides value today, but also has laid the foundation for tomorrow's business in telematics, routing and dispatching, and other location-based consumer and commercial services.

Real-time and predicted travel time information can be delivered in various forms. Through its TrafficCast Channel, the firm acts as a wholesaler to provide real-time and predicted travel time and traffic data to business customers, enabling them to deliver personalized travel solutions to end-users via the Internet, wireless, and in-vehicle devices. To support robust end-to-end travel solutions, TrafficCast provides translation tables that link its databases with major commercial map databases, including those of NavTeq (Navigation Technologies) and GDT (Geographic Data Technology). In addition, TrafficCast has partnerships with DOTs and other government sources nationwide for incident and construction data. To protect its core technologies, TrafficCast holds a series of patents and pending patents on traffic prediction and personalized traffic information provision. www.trafficcast.com