The Cell’O’Park Saga

For those who have never experienced the pain of parking on campus (and the associated costs), the name Cell’O’Park might not pique your ears. However, nearly all parking in and around UNSW’s Sydney campuses is managed by this company, along with parking across the University of Sydney, Macquarie University, and many other campuses across Australia.

Last week, many UNSW students and staff woke up to a slew of emails from the company, announcing a corporate branding change and a new name. While fairly mundane on its own, this was quickly followed by a series of emails that alternated between reaffirming the change and denying it outright. The confusion resulted in a “temporary injunction” from “the court of competent jurisdiction”, which apparently intended to “put an end to any prohibited requests or notifications to transfer to O-park”, contradicting a message from the University 2 days earlier that confirmed the move.

While the specifics are presumably confined to the inboxes of a few Cell’O’Park and UNSW administrative staff, here’s what we know:

1. On the 20th of December, OPark sent out an email to UNSW Cell’O’Park account holders (i.e. anyone who has parked on campus in recent years), stating that all Cell’O’Park accounts for UNSW would be migrated automatically to OPark. This email was sent via Cell’O’Park’s automated email provider.
2. Cell’O’Park sent out an email claiming that the earlier email was “sent by the local representative in breach of his obligations towards CelloPark”, and that “OPark App is not part or connected to CelloPark in any way [sic] and your account will not be transmitted to Opark App”. This email was not sent from the normal mail server of Cell’O’Park Australia, but rather a server owned by the Israeli mailing list service “​​InforUMobile”. However, Noise has confirmed that Cell’O’Park has previously used this mail server to contact UNSW account holders.
   1. Noise has confirmed that both OPark and Cell’O’Park are registered under the same ABN as of December 11 2024 (over a week before the first email).
3. UNSW sent an email to all staff stating that the first email was sent without authorisation, but that the rebrand to OPark was legitimate and would be occurring.
4. Finally, Cell’O’Park sent out an email claiming that they had received a temporary injunction against OPark, preventing the rebrand.
5. Later in the week (yes, all of that was on the same day), Cell’O’Park Australia confirmed on Facebook that the rebrand was legitimate and that user data was safe. According to the post, the OPark app is a new app completely developed and managed by Cell’O’Park Australia, while the existing Cell’O’Park app is managed (but not owned or developed) by Cell’O’Park Australia. It also made reference to a “commercial dispute” as the cause of the back-and-forth emails.

Prior to this debacle, Cell’O’Park was the Australian arm of the Israeli company “Cello”, which expanded to university campuses across Australia in 2015. However, it appears that the Australian division of the company was bought out by Ori Almog, who founded Cell’O’Park Australia in 2008. Ori is listed as the technical contact for the OPark domain, and both OPark and Cell’O’Park Australia share the same customer service phone number. At the time of writing, the phone number still responds with “Thank you for calling Cell’O’Park”. Additionally, the Facebook page linked on the OPark website is still for @CellOParkAU.

We may never know what actually happened behind the scenes, but it’s a fitting end to a year of coups and EGMs at UNSW.

See you in 2025!