Press Releases

Budapest, November 18, 2011 11:00

The Academic Committee in Debrecen of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences and the Chamber of Commerce and Industry in Jász-Nagykun-Szolnok County have awarded an innovation prize to Jászkun Volán Plc. The city card was introduced as a joint development in close cooperation with the Municipality of Szolnok within Magyar Telekom’s T-City Program, and with the involvement of the Netlock Ltd. company.

Imre Gágyor, branch director of Jászkun Volán Plc. said: “Jászkun Volán has won the prize as a result of its successful participation in the development of a major element of the innovation process over several years that covers the whole urban public transportation activity. It’s worth emphasising that in order to win market space and attain better quality the local government and businesses have joined in a cluster and have been able to “capitalize” their skills together, in a harmonized, organized and professional manner. We will be able to find out more about the habits of our passengers using public transport, which will help us in better satisfying their needs. The standard of our service will improve considerably and its availability will be enhanced; moreover, we have also made the first and far from insignificant step towards implementation of the electronic travel ticket and pass system through the use of the city card.”

The T-City Szolnok City Card is the joint development of the Municipality of Szolnok, Magyar Telekom, Jászkun Volán Plc and NetLock Ltd in the framework of Telekom’s T-City program. The pilot operation of the city card started on May 1, 2011. The citizens of Szolnok who take part in the program have been given intelligent cards which enable them to use state-of-the-art community services with the help of the CityPass system. Gábor Pukler, Telekom’s innovation and business development director said: “The prize is confirmation that we are on the right track with our developments. We are working to continuously improve the City Card and to develop new possibilities of use. We hope that there will be further outstanding and innovative initiatives during the long-term cooperation of Szolnok and Telekom, in the framework of the T-City program.”

The city card, as an applied innovation, has been placed at the service of community transport for the first time by Jászkun Volán Transport Plc. One important function of the city card is the electronic community transport system. The card or the NFC enabled mobile phone substituting it can handle several fee products together—passes and tickets alike—that can be purchased at a central ticket office or the web shop (szolnok.citypass.hu) and, beginning from next year, with the help of the user’s mobile phone. When boarding the vehicle the card, the size of a bank card, has to be validated at a special reader. In this ways passengers can use community transport services quickly and comfortably, without the need to stand in a queue, while the operator obtains precise information on usage.

The CityPass community card system also facilitates storage in a single safe and intelligent card of the sensitive data needed for identification for the use of transport, commercial, financial, public administration, educational or even welfare services.

“We are proud that, as the developer of the community card system we have been able to contribute to the successes of the first Hungarian city card system which extends to complex services, including its pilot operation in transport services,” said Zsolt Rózsahegyi, NetLock Ltd managing director. “One of the main considerations in the development of the card system has been security. This is why we have provided the multi-functional cards with a protection supported by digital signatures, which excludes the possibility of abuse. In addition we have also laid emphasis on enabling wide use of the cards.”

The Academic Committee of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences in Debrecen (MTA DAB), the Chambers of Commerce and Industry in Hajdú-Bihar, Szabolcs-Szatmár-Bereg and Jász-Nagykun-Szolnok Counties and the Innova Regional Agency in the Northern Great Plain Area announced this year for the 15th time the Northern Great Plain Innovation Prize competition for businesses outstanding in innovative technologies and product development. The aim of the competition is to give moral and professional recognition to outstanding and successful innovation efforts. The main criteria for the evaluation of entries are the use of the social and scientific results generated through research and development, innovativeness and social utility. The prize was presented at the Award Ceremony held at MTA DAB headquarters on November 7, Hungarian Science Day.