UPDATED: Traffic and Travel provider Trafficlink has been sold to ITIS in a deal worth over £16 million. It's unknown how the sale will affect staff at Trafficlink's seven regional offices, with one source describing the situation as"rocky".
Trafficlink currently provides information and bulletins to the BBC, Highways Agency, UBC Media and 185 commercial radio stations. There has been increasing uncertainty amongst staff and management since the beginning of the year, when Australian operation Global Traffic Network announced the launch of operations in the UK and Europe.
ITIS source traffic information from various fleet management companies, combine it with incident information from the likes of Trafficlink and create content for online, WAP and RDS receivers. They will initially pay £10.5 million for Trafficlink and up to £6 million in performance-related bonuses by June 2009.
Stuart Marks, chief executive of ITIS, commented: "The navigation and broadcast industries are evolving rapidly and we believe that the combination of ITIS' speed and flow data and Trafficlink's incident information will provide compelling, real time and historical journey data."
One member of staff, who wished to remain anonymous, told Radio Today the situation going forward seemed uncertain: "As far as we are aware, our jobs are to be unaffected. Then again, none of us knew we were being sold off."
"There are a lot of people planning on leaving, and there are different broadcasters in every day – you rarely seem to see the same one twice. It's looking kind of rocky from our point of view. "