RU listening haha
So why would the carriers introduce these features now? Simple, said Jill Aldort, a marketing analyst with the Yankee Group. The only demographic groups not yet saturated with cellphones, she said, are the very young and the very old.
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“The way to get to the parents is to alleviate their concerns about surprisingly high cellphone bills, or their child sitting in math class texting or accessing inappropriate content,” Ms. Aldort said.
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Whether parents will like the feel of these new reins in their hands is an open question. In a recent Nielsen Online survey, most parents of 8-to-12-year-olds say they don’t use even the rudimentary parental controls offered on phones, like the ability to block calls made to certain numbers.
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Hello, and thank you for calling National Carrier Media Relations. We never stop thinking about you!
Hi, BOB TEDESCHI from the New York Times for Daniel Flox.
[recording] You will hear silence followed by a series of clicks. Do not hang up.
[2 minutes]
DS: Bob Tedeffi, this is Dan Slox. Did you hear the silence? Did you enjoy it?
BT: I guess I s--
DS: Just kidding--a little Depeche Mode joke there. How can I help you.
BT: Couple of questions. We received the brief about your new set of parental controls and I have some points to clarify.
DS: Absolutely. At National Carrier we understand that kids will be kids. That’s why we are proud to introduce “Surrogate 1”, the feature that gives parents more choices than ever before.
BT: Great. Can you tell me a little about what prompted this move?
DS: Absolutely. We understand that kids are constantly looking for new ways to get the most out of their cellular experience, and parents are, too.
BT:
DS: Our call centers are slammed with credit requests from screaming parents. Off the record.
BT: I see. So how does thi--
DS: The way to get to the parents is to alleviate their concerns about surprisingly high cellphone bills, or their child sitting in math class texting or accessing inappropriate content. We understand that parents want more choices than ever. That’s why we are also offering them the ability to prevent calls on their children’s phones from 9am to 2pm. With Surrogate 1, parents have more options than ever.
BT: That’s an interesting concept. Three followups to that. First, is that time window when most overage situations arise, or does it usually happen at night? Second, why not give parents the power to choose which hours are right for their child? Third, that doesn’t really seem to address the fundamental problem of children texting inappropriate content, only when they do it.
DS: Unfortunately, parents are not even using the tools we give them! We have offered number blocking for some time and they don’t even use it!
BT: How is number blocking is related to overage charges or inappropriate content?
DS: Number blocking! That we already gave them!
BT: Let’s go to a different question. Let’s say a parent is looking to limit the number of minutes or SMS messages a child can use their phone per day regardless of when they use them. Do you offer that capability?
DS: Absolutely. We give them two layers of choice! First, they can manually add minutes to their child’s pre-paid phone plan every single day. Second, they can subscribe to our “Family Unlimited Bonanza” plan.
BT: So you don’t actually offer a way to limit a child’s usage at all.
DS: With Surrogate 1, we are offering more choices than ever before.
BT: And unlimited usage is sort of the opposite of--
DS: CHOICES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
BT: So let’s say a parent wants to restrict a child to 90 minutes of talk time per day after school but wants to exclude calls to the parents from that cap. And they want to turn off SMS capability once the child reaches the monthly limit. Do you offer that capability?
[series of beeps]
BT: ... hello?
[call dropped]
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