Q-Free ASA (Q-Free) is a supplier of Tolling, Traffic Management and Connected ITS (C-ITS)/Connected Vehicle solutions with headquarters in

Trondheim Trondheim ( , , ; ), historically Kaupangen, Nidaros, and Trondhjem (), is a city and municipality in Trøndelag county, Norway. As of 2022, it had a population of 212,660. Trondheim is the third most populous municipality in Norway, and is ...

Norway Norway, officially the Kingdom of Norway, is a Nordic countries, Nordic country located on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe. The remote Arctic island of Jan Mayen and the archipelago of Svalbard also form part of the Kingdom of ...

. The company has approximately 380 employees with 17 offices around the world and traded under the ticker QFR on the

Oslo Stock Exchange Oslo Stock Exchange () (OSE: OSLO) is a stock exchange within the Nordic countries and offers Norway's only regulated markets for securities trading today. The stock exchange offers a full product range including equities, derivatives and fixed ...

from 2002 to December 2023 when private ownership removed the listing.

History

With offices in most

European countries The list below includes all entities falling even partially under any of the various common definitions of Europe, geographical or political. Fifty generally recognised sovereign states, Kosovo with limited, but substantial, international reco ...

Asia Asia ( , ) is the largest continent in the world by both land area and population. It covers an area of more than 44 million square kilometres, about 30% of Earth's total land area and 8% of Earth's total surface area. The continent, which ...

Australia Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country comprising mainland Australia, the mainland of the Australia (continent), Australian continent, the island of Tasmania and list of islands of Australia, numerous smaller isl ...

and

Americas The Americas, sometimes collectively called America, are a landmass comprising the totality of North America and South America.''Webster's New World College Dictionary'', 2010 by Wiley Publishing, Inc., Cleveland, Ohio. When viewed as a sing ...

, Q-Free sells applications mainly within electronic toll collection for road financing, congestion charging, truck-tolling and parking/access control, and supplies DSRC (Dedicated Short Range Communication) technology, OCR (image processing), ALPR (Automatic License Plate Recognition) and GNSS (Global Navigation Satellite System) based products as well as traffic management systems such as Kinetic Mobility platform, traffic controllers and related software. The company was established as Micro Design AS in 1984. In 1988, Q-Free ETC technology was installed in

and two years later in

Oslo Oslo ( or ; ) is the capital and most populous city of Norway. It constitutes both a county and a municipality. The municipality of Oslo had a population of in 2022, while the city's greater urban area had a population of 1,064,235 in 2022 ...

, the two systems being the predecessor to the present AutoPASS technology in Norway. The company's first international delivery came in 1995, to

Portugal Portugal, officially the Portuguese Republic, is a country on the Iberian Peninsula in Southwestern Europe. Featuring Cabo da Roca, the westernmost point in continental Europe, Portugal borders Spain to its north and east, with which it share ...

and in 1997, the European standard for Electronic Toll Collection was introduced. In 1998, the company changed its name to Q-Free. In September 2001, Q-Free bought the cellphone manufacturer MagCom.Q-Free buys mobile phone company
from

NRK The Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation (), commonly known by its initialism NRK, is a Norwegian state-run, government-influenced radio and television public broadcasting company. The NRK broadcasts three national TV channels and thirteen nat ...

, in Norwegian. The new company, named Q-Free MagCom, continued as a separate entity for around a year, after which the production of phones ceased.

References

{{Authority control Companies based in Trondheim Information technology companies of Norway Electronics companies of Norway Companies established in 1984