next:urban technologies GmbH – The E-Paper Company – is the legal successor of urban technics. Uurban technics was the company of Gerhard Urban and was founded in 2008. In 2012, a new pillar began to grow at urban technics: “E-Paper Displays for Passenger Information“. At that time still with the focus to replace the paper timetable. After three years of market and technology development, the first pilot projects are launched in Graz and Vienna. The technology and the demands on the scoreboards developed rapidly and in order to meet the growth of the topic, Gerhard Urban was looking for a technical partner – and found him in Gregor Keltscha. Together they decided to put the company on a new footing and so urban technics became next:urban technologies GmbH, which was founded on February 29, 2016. When we talk about ourselves, we like to talk about ourselves as “The E-Paper Company”.
The first pilots at Wiener Linien were followed by the first projects and roll-outs in Austria. Today, with over 40 e-paper projects, we are the leading manufacturer of E-Paper ads in the indoor and outdoor area as “The E-Paper Company”. Through our E-Paper projects, however, we were increasingly challenged to connect our E-Paper Displays to the various ITCS systems. Handling with VDV and SIRI interfaces became part of daily business and software solutions another core competence of next:urban. This know-how was the cornerstone for projects such as the data hub of Wiener Linien but also for many other software solutions in the field of “local public transport”.
In 2022 we took growth into account and moved to our new office in Guntramsdorf.