A heating element made of metal wire is installed at an internal circumferential surface of a cylindrical main thermal insulation body of an electric heater according to the present invention. The storage medium stores a digital input signal and auxiliary associated with the digital input data. The settling time of the regulator can therefore be significantly reduced for faster dynamic responses, even with dominant-pole compensation. An ATM stream specific to a receiving location can be extracted from the combined ATMIP signal by an existing ATM-based optical network termination. When the control unit requests information concerning vehicles parked within a particular parking zone, the computer sends corresponding information relating to one or more additional parking zones that are geographically close to the parking zone in question.