- Milestone marks the completion of the system development
phase and the commencement of the toll operations phase.
- ETC now manages ORB's customer service centers and
back-office system.
- ORB's toll system supports economic development, propelled
by safer and more efficient travel throughout the
area.
- New, locally based call center.
TORONTO, Sept. 7,
2023 /PRNewswire/ - Quarterhill Inc. ("Quarterhill"
or the "Company") (TSX: QTRH) (OTCQX: QTRHF), a leading provider of
tolling and enforcement solutions in the Intelligent Transportation
System ("ITS") industry, announces that the transfer of the
Louisville-Southern Indiana Ohio River Bridges – RiverLink Project'
("RiverLink") back-office toll operations to the Company's
wholly-owned subsidiary, Electronic Transaction Consultants
("ETC"), is now complete. ETC assumed management of RiverLink's
customer service centers and back-office system on September 1, 2023.
The RiverLink toll system, operated by the Kentucky-Indiana
Joint Board, consists of three bridges that span the Ohio River,
connecting Louisville, Kentucky,
and Southern Indiana. In
July 2021, ETC was awarded a 10-year
contract with RiverLink that includes three years for system design
and implementation and seven years for toll service operations. The
contract also includes two optional three-year renewal periods.
ETC is providing RiverLink with riteHorizon™, its full-suite of
tolling enterprise back-office solutions. riteHorizon capabilities
include account management, customer relationship management, an
online customer service center, reporting and analytics. Monitoring
and maintenance tools are also a key part of riteHorizon to ensure
high availability and customer billing accuracy.
ETC has partnered with WSP USA
Services Inc. ("WSP USA") on this
project, with ETC providing the back-office system, and WSP
USA managing contact center
interactions for RiverLink customers. This partnership pairs ETC's
best-in-class back-office technology with WSP USA's leading services for highway customer
service centers. As part of the contract with RiverLink, a new
locally based contact center has been built, which will provide for
new jobs in the region.
"This highly anticipated milestone marks the completion of ETC's
system development and the commencement of the toll operations
phase with RiverLink," said Kevin Holbert, Chief Executive
Officer at ETC. "We are proud to support RiverLink's efforts to
provide world-class infrastructure to its constituents, to improve
mobility and safety in this important river-crossing area and to
generate resources that support future infrastructure and economic
development. We are confident that our tolling solutions will
provide RiverLink and the citizens of Indiana and Kentucky with dependable operations and the
highest quality of customer service."
ETC's riteHorizon solution maximizes self-service and customer
service representative productivity, reduces turnaround times, and
places direct configuration and process control into RiverLink
personnel's hands. The new system streamlines billing, improves
ease of website and mobile self-service, and facilitates speedy
question and issue resolution for RiverLInk's 275,000 registered
customers and visitors.
For the first time, riteHorizon is being delivered on Oracle's
Cloud Infrastructure. Migrating toll systems to the cloud offers
multiple benefits, including reduced time to implement systems vs.
on-premises infrastructure, reduced maintenance burden by switching
to a model that uses infrastructure-as-a-service and
platform-as-a-service, reduced capital expenditures for deployment
of IT infrastructure, reduced downtime due to the greater
reliability of engineered cloud solutions, and improved reliability
enabled by a cloud-based disaster recovery environment that
satisfies the agency's business continuity requirements.
About Quarterhill
Quarterhill is a leading provider of tolling and enforcement
solutions in the Intelligent Transportation System (ITS) industry.
Our goal is global leadership in ITS, via organic growth of the
Electronic Transaction Consultants, LLC (ETC) and International
Road Dynamics Inc. (IRD) platforms, and by continuing an
acquisition-oriented investment strategy that capitalizes on
attractive growth opportunities within ITS and its adjacent
markets. Quarterhill is listed on the TSX under the symbol QTRH and
on the OTCQX Best Market under the symbol QTRHF. For more
information, visit
www.quarterhill.com.
About Electronic Transaction
Consultants, LLC
ETC is a leading U.S. intelligent transportation systems
provider, developing and delivering best in class solutions for
tolling, congestion management, urban mobility, and multimodal
transportation needs. ETC's passionate and innovative team has been
driving the future of mobility since 1999, with several industry
firsts, including all electronic tolling (AET), dynamic pricing,
agency interoperability, hosted mobility solutions and machine
learning.
For over two decades, ETC has delivered sophisticated solutions
to many of the U.S.'s largest toll authorities, including
state-wide programs, county networks and tolling-specific
authorities. ETC's solutions process over two billion transactions
annually totaling over $3 billion in
revenues for our customers, incorporating the latest in evergreen
open-source and SaaS technologies and Big Data architecture through
our innovative riteSuite™ products.
About the Ohio River Bridges Toll
System
The Ohio River Bridges RiverLink toll system in both
Kentucky and Indiana spans the Abraham Lincoln Bridge (I-65
North), the John F. Kennedy Memorial
Bridge (I-65 South) and the Lewis and Clark Bridge (SR 265/KY 841)
connecting Prospect, KY and
Utica, IN.
The Louisville Southern Indiana Ohio River Bridges project is a
bi-state collaboration to increase cross-river mobility, improve
safety, alleviate traffic congestion, and connect highways. The
project includes the construction of the new Abraham Lincoln Bridge
to carry northbound I-65 traffic, the rehabilitation of the Kennedy
Bridge to carry southbound I-65 traffic, the reconfiguration of
Spaghetti Junction in downtown Louisville, and the construction of the Lewis
and Clark Bridge eight miles upstream from downtown Louisville to connect the Snyder Freeway and
the Lee Hamilton Highway between Prospect
Kentucky and Utica Indiana.
The I-65 bridges and the Lewis and Clark Bridge were completed in
December 2016.
Forward-looking
Information
This news release contains forward-looking statements regarding
Quarterhill, its operating subsidiaries and their respective
businesses. Forward-looking statements are based on estimates and
assumptions made by Quarterhill in light of its experience and its
perception of historical trends, current conditions, expected
future developments and the expected effects of new business
strategies, as well as other factors that Quarterhill believes are
appropriate in the circumstances. The forward-looking events and
circumstances discussed herein may not occur and could differ
materially as a result of known and unknown risk factors and
uncertainties affecting Quarterhill, which include, without
limitation, the risks described in Quarterhill's March 22, 2023 annual information form for the
year ended December 31, 2022 (the
"AIF"). In addition, readers are also urged to review the
additional risk factors disclosed in our Management's Discussion
and Analysis for the three and six months ended June 30, 2023 filed on www.sedarplus.ca.
Quarterhill recommends that readers review and consider all of
these risk factors and notes that readers should not place undue
reliance on any of Quarterhill's forward-looking statements.
Quarterhill has no intention, and undertakes no obligation, to
update or revise any forward-looking statements, whether as a
result of new information, future events or otherwise, except as
required by law.
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SOURCE Quarterhill Inc.