T-Mobile USA announced the availability of Family Allowances, promised in July. This new feature, now launched, lets parents manage when and how their family members use their T-Mobile phones and service.
With Family Allowances, parents can give kids an upfront monthly wireless allowance that works on all the phones T-Mobile offers to prevent surprise overages. The feature lets parents set and change limits for minutes, messages and downloads (e.g., games, ring tones and wallpaper) using an online tool.
Once the allowance is reached, the feature shuts off service for that specific element and parents receive a notification.
Parents can stay in contact with their family members by setting up "Always Allowed" numbers that will continue to connect, even after allowances have been spent. Any unlimited calling features that are included in a family's plan, such as myFaves and T-Mobile-to-T-Mobile, can also still be used.
Parents can choose to establish additional limits on the time of day a phone may be used, set allowances to zero to prohibit the use of minutes, messages or downloads (other than to "Always Allowed" numbers), and establish numbers that are blocked from calling or sending messages to any phone on their family plan.
In addition to Family Allowances, T-Mobile continues to offer Web Guard, a free-of-charge feature that restricts access to certain adult-themed Web sites.
Earlier this week Verizon Wireless unveiled a similar product, Usage Controls, a tool for customers to "manage their own wireless experience," company officials say.
Usage Controls is an online service providing customers the ability to manage and control how they use their wireless phones, as well as how their children or others on a "family share" or multiple-line account use their phones.
The new service expands and enhances features first introduced last year with Parental Controls, Verizon officials say, "including content filters." Since 2006, Verizon Wireless has also provided customers with ratings for the content found on its V CAST service, and ways to manage or personalize text messaging options.
"We hear from our customers — especially the ones who are paying the bills — that they like to be aware of how their wireless service is being used. Usage Controls are a simple way to take control of all the mobile phones on your account," said Mike Lanman, chief marketing officer of Verizon Wireless.
With Usage Controls, customers can track voice and data usage levels to avoid any unexpected charges or overages, and help parents provide wireless service for their children by managing what content they are viewing or understanding if they are accruing additional costs.
With the service, customers can set thresholds for voice minutes, set specific limits for text, picture, instant and video messaging as part of pay-as-you-go or message bundle plans, set time of day restrictions for data use and messaging, create lists of "trusted" and "blocked" numbers (calls to 911 will always be allowed to connect) and employ content filters.
David Sims is a contributing editor for IoTevolutionworld. To read more of David�s articles, please visit his columnist page. He also blogs for IoTevolutionworld here.
