T-Mobile USA to give parents more control

Thanks to a new T-Mobile USA Inc. offering, parents can give their children a different type of allowance each month, and it’s not the typical $5 they get for finishing chores.
The carrier unveiled Family Allowances, a feature allowing parents to manage multiple accounts. To eliminate surprise overages, a common problem among family plans with text-crazy teens, the new service lets parents set a monthly wireless allowance, allowing a certain number of minutes, messages and downloads. Once an allowance is hit in any of those areas, the service shuts off. However, parents can select certain numbers to continue working, even after a service is shut off, through the Always Allowed feature.
T-Mobile USA’s unlimited features such as myFaves and in-network calling will remain available once allowances are spent, but parents can choose to set allowances on calling features as well, even after the carrier recently launched unlimited options for family plans. Parents also have the option of establishing the time of day when a phone can be used, set allowances of minutes, messages and downloads down to zero at any given time, and select numbers that will always be blocked, an increasingly popular feature among carriers. T-Mobile USA continues to offer Web Guard, a free feature restricting access to adult-themed Web sites.
Family Allowance is set to launch in August at an introductory rate of $2 per month.