Orange, SFR team up to ease parking in Paris

Here in the US of A, we like to do things the old fashioned way. Case in point: when we're looking for a way to track availability of parking spaces in real time, we turn to satellite radio for the answer (okay, fine... bad example). In France, Carriers Orange and SFR have teamed up with NavX, V-Traffic, and a number of other firms to take an arguably simpler approach to the problem. A new feature on Orange's portal (and we're guessing SFR's as well) enables users to search for nearby parking garages with available spots; cell triangulation can estimate the phone's position, or the user can enter a location manually. Of course, only garages explicitly participating in the system will be listed, but seeing how everyone has a phone, we could imagine the holdouts losing business at a brisk pace.

[Via The Wireless Report]