Be-Mobile's History

Be-Mobile was founded in November 2006 by Jan Cools via the holding company TC-Matix. Be-Mobile's mission has always been to be a leading commercial provider of traffic and mobility content and services.

The startup of Be-Mobile was based on a succesfull trial project in 2005 on collecting traffic information based on mobile phones. This trial project was organized by ITS Belgium, the Intelligent Traffic Systems organization set-up by Jan Cools and Philip Taillieu in 2003, and involved partners like the Traffic Center of the Flemish Government and Proximus.

From the start of the company and during the years following Be-Mobile has been involved in numerous R&D projects within the programs of IWT (the Flanders institute for the promotion of innovation and science) and IBBT (the Flanders institute for the development of broadband technology). In 2009 Be-Mobile was awarded as the most innovative starting company of 2009, and received the award from Flemish Minister-President Kris Peeters and Flemish Vice-Minister-President Ingrid Lieten. You can watch the video for the award here.

By the end of 2006 Be-Mobile found Touring Club ready to invest in the company. Touring Club, the leading Belgian roadside assitance company, recognised the need for high quality traffic information in Belgium and Europe, not only for its own members but for the whole society. Touring had a rich netwok of international sister companies within the ARC network, allowing Be-Mobile to rapidly expand its coverage internationally.

Touring started in the 90's a traffic information call center, called Touring Mobilis, to collect traffic information for Belgian radio stations. In 2008 the decision was made to integrate the traffic call center within Be-Mobile. This integration also boosted the collaboration between Be-Mobile and the radio stations VRT and RTBF, where Be-Mobile is the provider of all traffic bulletins.

In 2010 Be-Mobile welcomed a new shareholder, B-Holding. This is the holding company for the national Belgian railways NMBS/SNCB. B-Holding is also the mother company of the railway infrastructure provider Infrabel. Within the vision of becoming a provider of multi-modal mobility solutions, B-Holding needed to get acces to the drivers in order convince drivers to take public transport and leave their car in the different parkings of the railway stations.

B-Holding and Be-Mobile decided to set-up a joint-venture Go-Mobile for the development and commercialisation of multi-modal mobility solutions. Based on the content of Be-Mobile for traffic and parking, enriched with real-time content on public transport, Go-Mobile develops a multi-channel service platform that will offer personalized routing advice to travellers over mobile phones, website and variable message signs.

Within the TC-Matix holding Be-Mobile's sister company FLOW specialises in dynamic traffic services. FLOW sells, rents and operates solutions for sensor based traffic monitoring and dynamic signalisation, guarding safety during roadworks, providing parking guidance, recognizing number plates.