With a flurry of launches last week, the wireless industry appears to have re-discovered-and is falling head over heels in love with-The Family.
Both Verizon Wireless and T-Mobile USA Inc. announced new family-focused services on the day that Disney Mobile began selling its highly anticipated mobile virtual network operator service, which allows parents a substantial level of control over their children’s wireless use. This adds to a tracking service already available from Sprint Nextel Corp. for its customers, and a few other services that offer to track vehicles or handsets using the Global Positioning System.
Andrew Cole, analyst for CSMG/Adventis, said that there’s no question that the launch of Disney Mobile prompted the rash of family-focused services, and that the trend is likely to continue.
“I think you’ll see the carriers watching the major MVNOs and imitating them very quickly,” Cole said.
But far from being cookie-cutter copies of one another, the services offer varying degrees of target ages and features.
The Chaperone service from Verizon Wireless, Family Locator from Sprint Nextel and Disney Mobile’s Family Locator all offer parents the ability to track a child’s handset using GPS, either via the Internet or their own wireless device.
Verizon Wireless and Sprint Nextel have similar offers: GPS location requests for the child’s handset and a feature generally known as “geofences” that allows parents to be alerted when a child enters or leaves a zone that the parent sets up. Sprint Nextel charges $10 a month for both, and Verizon Wireless tacks on $10 to a family’s monthly bill for the GPS service and $20 if they want both. Both services are included in the cost of a voice plan from Disney Mobile, although the number of location requests is limited to five per month. Disney Mobile sells an unlimited location-request package for $13 monthly.
Sprint Nextel’s locator service sends a text message to the child’s phone so that they know they are being tracked. In the case of Verizon Wireless’ Chaperone, the handset screen glows blue and the word “locating” pops up; the one handset that currently works with the service, LG Electronics Co. Ltd.’s Migo, does not have text-messaging capability. The service is aimed at the parents of children between the ages of five and nine years old, while Disney Mobile is aiming at teens and tweens between the ages of about eight to 12-and the targeted demographic may end up making quite a difference in uptake, according to Yankee Group analyst Marina Amoroso.
A recent survey of mobile users by the Yankee Group found that 81 percent of teens between the ages of 13 and 17 already were on a family plan-a penetration rate that substantially exceeds that of the rest of the population. So services aimed at the parents of older children may need to be patient about their uptake rate, Amoroso said. The Yankee Group found that only about 27 percent of the 5.3 million tweens had phones.
In terms of handsets that can be tracked, Verizon Wireless offers the Migo handset, which offers limited functionality, for $50. Disney Mobile is selling only a silver clamshell from Pantech Wireless Inc., the DM-P100, and plans to add a red LG flip phone to its repertoire soon. Sprint Nextel says its service can track 30 different GPS-enabled CDMA and iDEN phones.
Beyond tracking and alerts, Disney Mobile allows parents to dole out a set number of minutes for children on the plan to use, and to receive alerts when the limit is reached. Parents also can disable the phone during certain days or times-such as during school hours-although the phone can always be used to call a parent or an emergency number.
T-Mobile USA builds more on the usage controls than on locator services with a limited-time offer called kidConnect, which promises to help parents keep junior’s cell-phone bill to $20 a month plus taxes and fees, unless the parent authorizes more.
The child can make unlimited calls to the parent’s phone, since it involves in-network calling; out-of-network calling is limited to 50 anytime nationwide minutes and unlimited nationwide weekend calling is included. Once those 50 anytime minutes are used up, the phone’s minutes can be replenished with T-Mobile USA To Go refill cards online, by phone or at a retail store. Kids also can trade their anytime minutes for text messaging, at a ratio of four text messages per minute of voice calling.
KidConnect, which is designed to work on any T-Mobile USA phone, also limits the ability to download content to a child’s phone. According to T-Mobile USA, a unique WAP interface is designed to help prevent kids from using the handset to sign up for services that charge more than a one-time fee.
Disney Mobile, comparatively, also allows unlimited alerts between family members that override other functions of the phone until the message has been acknowledged.
A California company called Cats Communication offers a similar locating service for parents who have Sprint Nextel iDEN phones from Motorola Inc. For about $20 per month, the Cattrax service uses GPS technology that not only allows parents to track the location of the handset, but what direction and how fast it is traveling. The service also requires a $10 per month data plan and $3 per month public IP address, according to the Cattrax site. According to the company, parents can be alerted if, for example, a handset stops too long in one place or exceeds a certain speed. A demo of the service also indicates that it gives parents a plus-or-minus reading of how accurate the information is.
The company recommends its products for children as young as five and says it believes that “every school-age child in America should have a Cats GPS Locator Phone.”
And lest anyone think that cell phones are the only way to track wayward youngsters, a company called Guardian Angel offers a $350 device designed to be installed in a teen driver’s car that will monitor rate of speed and location and can send alerts to parents via cell phone, among other features.
