New Web site lets parents monitor teen cell-phone use

September 4th, 2007 Noor

AT&T plans to unveil a new Web site on Tuesday that allows parents to limit how many minutes teens can put on their cell phones, how many text messages they can send and receive, and how much can be spent on ringtones and games.

And other key topics of family dispute can be regulated. Don’t want your teen texting during school? Shut that down. Don’t want him talking after 10 p.m.? Put the phone to bed. Don’t want her calling or receiving calls from a certain someone? Block that number.

“It’s about time,” says telecom analyst Jeff Kagan, a regular source for CNBC and Fortune magazine. “This addresses a runaway problem that every parent complains about. The whole market was set up to give parents whiplash. They’re told a new line for a kid costs $10, until they get the bill.”

About 79% of American teens 15-17 have cell phones, according to C&R Research Services in Chicago.

The telecom industry has experimented with parental limits for teens’ online and phone activity for years. Tiny Disney Mobile introduced this same system of limits last year, but it reaches very few customers, compared to market leader AT&T. But parental control of cell phones has never reached this far, analysts say.

The next phone innovation to go mainstream and affect family life? GPS tracking that lets parents see online where their phone-toting kids are.

Are there privacy issues with parents managing so much of their kids’ phone use?

“Not if they’re paying the bills,” Kagan says.

The service works on any AT&T phone bought within about the past two years and costs $5 per line per month. Teens can always call 911 — even if they’re past the set limits on minutes. Parents can set it up so teens can call or text them anytime.

AT&T has worked on the Smart Limits for Wireless for more than two years, and put the system through three rounds of testing with focus groups, says Carlton Hill, a vice president at AT&T wireless in Atlanta. “This allows the account holder, the person who pays the bill, to manage the account online.”

Will other wireless companies follow suit?

“It’s a great idea at a great price,” says Kagan. “The other companies will do it if they begin to lose business.”

“People will be talking about this,” says Weston Henderek, a senior analyst specializing in telecommunications for the company Current Analysis in Virginia. “It will have a direct effect on families. There’s no more negotiating or arguments. The parents win.”

Charlotte mom Connie Reed has at times struggled to supervise the cell phone use of three kids. “I think it would be ideal to have set limits that can’t be exceeded.”

Reed has received bills that made her do a double-take, but also likes the idea of shutting down text-messaging at certain times. “That would be awesome.”

“I text nonstop,” admits her daughter, Ginny, a senior at East Mecklenburg High. “In a way it would be good to have limits, because then I wouldn’t have to worry about going over.” She says plenty of students text during class.

But if her parents decided to cut off her calls and texts to and from someone they didn’t like?

“That would really make me mad.”

Analyst Henderek doubts this innovation, or any other, could come between true teen-age love.

“Nothing’s ever stopped kids before.”

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