Value Added Services, VAS, is a term that was coined in the telecommunications industry for services that go beyond core service, such as mobile voice communications. Such additional services are intended to add value for the consumers in order to encourage them to use the telecommunications service more often and to add an additional revenue stream for the Service Provider.

In the context of EFC, a VAS in this strict sense is a telematics service offered to the Service User by means of an EFC OBE. This service might directly be consumed by the driver in the vehicle, or might, particularly in the case of heavy vehicles, be targeted at the freight operator and be consumed in a back office. Such services can be fleet management services like track-and-trace, payment services such as paying petrol automatically at the pump, or regulatory applications such as Electronic Licence Plate or access control. Such additional services and applications create additional value to the user, either by the value the new service creates to him, or in the case of regulatory services, by combining several functionalities in a single device, thus removing the need to install and maintain several pieces of equipment simultaneously.

In a wider sense, the operator of the EFC service can draw additional benefit from the data collected by the EFC system. Data from EFC OBE gives a good account of the traffic situation on the charged network, and may be utilised for statistical purposes, for traffic planning or even in real-time for traffic information purposes.

The scope of this TR covers both the original meaning of VAS, namely both additional services to the user of the core EFC service and additional value created for the operator of the charging system.