Dubbed “Smart Limits for Wireless,” the new service is available for $4.99 per line for AT&T wireless subscribers using a postpaid rate plan.
According to AT&T, in addition to giving parents the ability to set limits on their children’s wireless minutes and their portion of minutes available on shared wireless plans, the new program will allow parents to set limits on text messaging, instant messaging and download functions on their children’s phones, and restrict access to mobile websites.
David Christopher, chief marketing office for AT&T’s wireless division said that the program “enables parents to provide their children with the safety and convenience of wireless service while setting sensible boundaries for its use…. [it] gives parents peace of mind in knowing they will be able to keep in touch with their children but will avoid unexpected overage charges on their bill.”
According to AT&T, parents can also use the Smart Limits functions to establish a dollar amount ceiling for download purchases (like ringtones and games), control the times of day and days of the week that their child’s phone will operate, block calls and text messages to and from numbers that they don’t approve of, and “filter access to Internet content that is inappropriate for children.”
AT&T spokesman Fletcher Cook told the Associated Press that the Internet-filtration portion of the service will not be available for Apple iPhone users, due to the iPhone’s browser. Cook said that the filter also will be inoperable when a phone is making use of a Wi-Fi network, because AT&T can only block content delivered over its own wireless networks.
Asked for her initial response to AT&T’s announcement, Joan Irvine, the executive director for the Association of Sites Advocating Child Protection, told XBIZ that while the development of additional parental control tools is welcomed, the key is whether parents will take advantage of the technologies developed for them.
Irvine recently attended the Progress and Freedom Foundation’s Aspen Summit, a gathering at which representatives of various industry, political action and governmental organizations gathered to discuss information policy issues.
At the summit, “all these companies kept saying in their presentations, ‘We’re giving you all this information — but we can’t do it for you,’” Irvine said.
“If parents will use it — great,” Irvine said of AT&T’s Smart Limits program, adding that AT&T is not alone among major companies trying to address the issue of protecting children in the online and mobile environments.
“Comcast offers parents information, MySpace has put out information — everybody is offering parents more tools and information, but they have to use that information for it to have any effect,” Irvine said.