Just in time for the beginning of the skiing season, Telekom Austria Group M2M's experts have come up with new winter solutions. From now on, the mountain rails operators of the Hochzeiger ski area can rely on a new tool that will facilitate their arduous working conditions during the cold season. Up until now, snow groomer operators had never known whether it had snowed overnight and how much snow had accumulated. But, snowfall information is extremely important for them as, in the case of fresh snowfall, ski slopes need to be perfectly groomed to allow for unlimited skiing pleasure and prevent the freshly fallen snow to get frozen hard. Thus, in the early morning before ski lifts opened, mountain rails operators had to call each other to make a decision about potential slope maintenance work, which often turned out to be partly unnecessary, resulting in a waste of time and money.

This is now a thing of the past. Hochzeiger mountain rails have now been equipped with an M2M snow depth measurement tool, which allows ski lift operators to easily receive updated snowfall and snow accumulation information. If freshly fallen snow exceeds 10 cm, all mountain rails operators are sent a text message with the latest snow depth data early in the morning and are therefore in a position to organize their work accordingly. Unnecessary slope maintenance operations can therefore be prevented, leading to considerable time and cost savings. All snow depth and temperature data are transmitted to the FLEXify web platform via a data logger with a built-in SIM card and graphically displayed. The mountain rails operations manager can then autonomously administer corresponding alerting procedures and deploy only certain teams.

'Thanks to our broad-based solution portfolio, we are now able to meet all customer needs in a flexible manner. With our snow-depth measurement tool we are offering a new, innovative M2M solution just in time for the beginning of the winter season, while positioning ourselves once again as a leading service operator in the area of communications technology and a valuable provider of M2M solutions', so Bernd Liebscher, Managing Director at Telekom Austria Group M2M, explaining the benefits of this new winter maintenance service.

Besides, snow groomers of the Hochzeiger mountain rails are equipped with a Telekom Austria Group M2M's fleet management solution. Up until now, invoicing procedures with subcontractors had not been very transparent and rendered services could be correspondingly allocated only with a high administrative burden. With the new solution, the required data are transmitted to a web platform via hardware by means of a built-in SIM card and subsequently read out, allocated and billed. For customers, M2M solutions mean considerable cost optimization and simplification of internal processes.

Telekom Austria Group M2M has offered industry-specific telematics solutions for the winter season for over two years. Gries am Brenner has been the first municipality in Austria to use the special winter maintenance solutions developed by M2M experts. As a result, the use of snow removal vehicles can now be seamlessly documented and tracked via sensors and GPS technology.

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