AT&T Launches SmartLines

Recently an AT&T customer complained to the mobile carrier after it shipped her phone bill in several large cases. The problem was not her phone usage but her frequent text messaging. Over three hundred pages of text messages were included. For a working woman with a corporate job such an event would be a nuisance but not unexpected. People know how much they text other people. Parents on the other hand have received similar eye-openers and been shocked to find out how many calls and/or text messages their underaged children have made during the recent billing period. Evidently, parent's outrage reached the desk of executives at the mobile carrier as AT&T is launching a new service for parents.

AT&T's SmartLine service will allow parents to restrict when calls can be made and received. Also, they will be able to place a limit on the number of text messages a specific number can accumulate. With the new SmartLine service which will cost $4.99 a month, parents will have broader discretion as to what the child does and does not do on the phone, especially at times when the parent is unable to monitor the actions of their children.

With text messaging becoming more common than email and more desirable than even standard mobile phone conversations, parents have been bombarded by higher than expected mobile phone bills from carriers like AT&T and Verizon. More than the chic thing to do, texting has evolved into the communication method of choice when face-to-face contact is impossible. Simple and almost too easy, texting has gone from a cumbersome task to one as uncomplicated as dialing a number on many of the more modern mobile phones on the market today. In fact, mobile phone manufacturers have begun to design phones with texting and emailing in mind. Each new version of the Palm and Blackberry communication device is designed with a mini-keyboard in order to facilitate simpler typing.

Over the last three to four years, with the median mobile phone user's age decreasing drastically, the number of text messages has skyrocketed. Fifteen years ago when mobile phones began to make their entrance into the corporate world, communicating via text was impossible and unheard of. The closest thing to it was leaving a text message via a pager or beeper. And the only way that happened was if you spoke a phrase to an agent and they keyed it in and sent it to the recipient. Since that time, mobile phones have steadily increased in popularity until the last five years when phones started getting into the hands of kids whose parents wanted the phone for safety reasons as well as for daily activities. It became a way for a child to call when practice was over or they were ready to come home from the mall. Parents liked it because they were able to call and check on their kids at any time, regardless of where they were or if the establishment had a working pay phone.

But along with the good that mobile phones offered, a consequence was the lack of discipline actioned by teens who began to use the phones without consciousness of phone minutes and text messaging costs. A fourteen year old has no idea the number of minutes they have talked or how many are left on a shared-family plan that has three phones on it. This created a problem that forced many parents to wonder if having a mobile phone was the right thing to do, especially parents already on a tight or restrictive budget.

AT&T's efforts with the SmartLine service looks to calm those concerns by providing a structure within which a child is not able to exceed. If a child only has 500 minutes a month, with the SmartLine service, that is all they will be able to talk. If they get 500 text messages, 2 media downloads, and 1 ringtone purchase based on the parent's specifications, that is all they will be able to purchase. This service serves as a buffer and protective shield for parents and their budgets.