Abstract: A radio station tuning system enables a radio receiver installed in a vehicle to be automatically tuned to a radio station offering a desired program. In the system, a controller receives data recognized by a speech recognizing unit and a current position of the vehicle detected by a navigation unit, provides the data to a communication unit, turns a radio receiver on or off, and tunes the radio receiver to a desired radio station. The communication unit sends data to a base station data via a vehicle telephone line. Receiving the data, the base station has access to its data base storing program data (e.g. broadcasting time, frequencies and so on), retrieves desired data, and transmits them to the vehicle. The controller automatically tunes the radio receiver to the desired radio station on the basis of the received data.

Abstract: A data collection scheme with an improved data collection efficiency. In order to collect data from many terminals to a center having a plurality of center service ports through a public network, terminal data are transmitted from the terminals to the center through the public network by carrying out a calling operation to call up the center at each terminal, and the terminal data received at the center service ports are collected together. At the same time, a congestion state of the center service ports is measured, and a control data for controlling the calling operation at each terminal in order to improve the measured congestion state is generated and broadcast from the center to the terminals. Then, the calling operation at each terminal is controlled according to the control data broadcast from the center. The control data indicates at least a call probability by which the calling operation at each terminal is carried out probabilistically.