Telecentras to Secure the Data of the Electronic Road Toll System
Via Lietuva, the company implementing the electronic road toll system, has signed a contract with AB Lietuvos radijo ir televizijos centras (Telecentras) for the provision of state data center services. The state data center managed by Telecentras will store all data related to the new road toll system and its operation – information about toll road users, toll payers, the vehicles they use, and more.
“In order to implement a reliable road toll system, we must ensure the security of the IT equipment and data used. To this end, we sought partners that would have the status of a national data center and could provide the IT infrastructure resources required for this project. Telecentras met these and other criteria – it is one of the most modern data centers in our country and complies with national security requirements,” says Martynas Gedaminskas, CEO of Via Lietuva.
The information systems equipment and servers necessary for the operation of the electronic road toll system will be concentrated and stored at the Telecentras state data center. The data center is equipped to meet the highest Tier III reliability standards, ensuring redundancy for power supply, cooling, data transmission, and other systems. It is a secure and reliable space for the servers, information systems, critical or large-volume data, and websites of government agencies and organizations.
“Given the importance of implementing the electronic road toll system for the country, we are giving this project the highest priority and allocating the necessary technological and human resources. In a short period of time, we must set up a large-scale IT infrastructure in two state data centers to host the new toll collection system. The range of services provided by Telecentras will include cloud computing and additional IT solutions, such as a container management platform and software licenses,” says Remigijus Šeris, CEO of Telecentras.
The contract between Via Lietuvos and Telecentras, concluded through public procurement, will be valid for at least two years (with an option to extend it for one year), and the maximum contract value is 4.5 million euros (excluding VAT).
New road toll system to replace vignettes
On January 1, 2027, an advanced electronic road toll system will go into operation in Lithuania, replacing the vignettes currently used to collect road user charges.
The modern system will allow tolls to be calculated based on the actual distance traveled, so operators of vehicles in the M2, M3, N1, N2, and N3 categories will pay for actual road use rather than for a pre-selected period, for which a vignette must currently be purchased.
Like the current vignettes, the new system will apply to freight and passenger transport using toll roads, which total more than 2,800 km in Lithuania. These traffic flows have the greatest impact on road infrastructure wear and tear, so the new system will help distribute road maintenance and renewal costs more proportionally.
Nothing will change for drivers of passenger cars (Category M1) – the road user fee will continue not to apply to them.
