Sapa-AFP

VIENNA Next month Vienna will become the first major western European city where motorists can pay for parking simply by pushing buttons on their cellphones.

The Austrian capital is going hi-tech with "mparking", which allows drivers to send text messages to pay for parking minutes.

Subscribers will no longer have to go to the nearest news seller to buy parking vouchers.

They can log on to a website with their cellphones and type in 30, 60 or 90 minutes, depending on the amount of time they want to leave their cars, then settle the bill later along with their phone accounts.

"Vienna is the first major western European city to adopt the mobile phone parking payment system," said Elysabeth Mattes, a spokeswoman for Austria's biggest cellphone service provider, Mobilkom.

"M-parking" was developed by the German company Siemens but similar systems have been tested or implemented in Scandinavia and some corners of eastern and central Europe.

But Vienna's 1,5-million inhabitants and 130000 parking bays make next month's launch the biggest the system has seen so far.

"The Viennese were very enthusiastic when we did trial runs at the beginning of September; the technology proved reliable and there is nothing standing in the way of its commercial launch," Mattes said.

A Mobilkom spokesman said: "You can pay for parking even if all the news outlets are closed your mobile phone can now alert you when your parking time is about to expire."

In a country where 85% of the population have cellphones, Mobilkom believes m-parking will rapidly spread to other cities.