honey, I shrunk the kids’ mobile bills

August 6, 2008 at 5:04 pm Leave a comment

Give your teenager a mobile phone and don’t worry about losing your peace of mind or breaking the bank. Limit or rather control seems to be the operative word– the NYT reports that be it the number of calls, the numbers that can be dialed, the times during which calls can be made, the type of content that can be downloaded or the mobile websites that can be surfed – literally almost every key mobile activity can be restricted if one goes by the new plans being launched by major carriers. Maybe they should expand these plans to include corporate firms as well.

T-Mobile said it would announce a new service that will give parents a way to control almost every aspect of their children’s cellphone use, except what they say or write in a text message.

Verizon said it would soon offer similar services. AT&T Wireless was the first of the four major networks to introduce parental controls when it introduced the “Smart Limits” service last September. For $5 a month, parents can go online to set allowances for text messages, peak calling minutes and money spent on downloadable content.