From USA Today:
Disney Mobile family cellphone service helps parents keep track of kids
Updated 7/26/2006 11:15 PM ET
Your kids would love a cellphone. In exchange, they promise to clean their room and do their homework. You're happy to give them one — especially for safety reasons, provided they don't rack up excess text messaging and other charges.
But do youngsters want a phone letting you tightly control how many minutes they use — plus, who they call and when they call? Do they want a phone letting you track their location via GPS?
These are the main questions surrounding the recently launched Disney Mobile family cellphone service I've been testing with two LG DM-L200 handsets. While such location tracking and other features exist in other family-oriented cellphones, Disney is nicely putting the various elements together. Walt Disney may seem an unlikely wireless carrier, but Disney Mobile is no Mickey Mouse operation.
The LG phones are one of two handsets that work with the new service; Pantech supplies the other. Disney Mobile is a prime example of a company selling phone service under its own brand. Sprint is the underlying carrier.
Disney marketers say these are cellphones that "parents and teens can agree on." We'll see. I suspect Mom and Dad will appreciate the phones more than the kids.
Disney resisted phones with, say, mouse-shaped ears, lest it turn off the 11-to-15-year olds the company has in mind. The red and silver LG handsets aren't half-bad looking; Disney hopes the design will appeal to both parents and kids.
Not all features are working yet; you cannot access Radio Disney from the phones, for instance. But most others are in place:
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Controlling purse strings. You buy two or more phones when you sign up for service. One parent with the "parent" phone becomes the designated "family manager," setting monthly spending allowances for the "child" handset. The parent sets voice minutes, text messaging, picture messaging and downloads. This is easily accomplished by accessing a Family Center menu on the phone. The parent receives alerts when a child is bumping up against spending limits and can adjust allowances accordingly on the fly. Quibble: While you can change the allowance amounts via the parent phone, from a minimum sum to "unlimited," you cannot choose "zero" to prevent a kid, say, from doing any text messages.
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Alerts. You can dash off text alerts to the kid's phones, tapping out your own messages or choosing among a dozen pre-written messages ("Running late — be there soon!" "Can U get a ride?").
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Restricting numbers. At the Disney Mobile website, you can enter up to 20 phone numbers your kid can never access; 900 numbers are already prohibited. You can also enter phone numbers that will always be on, regardless of other calling restrictions, such as your office number or a relative's numbers. By default, your child can always dial 911 and reach other numbers that are part of the family plan.
You can also restrict the days and times your kid can call. Disney says parents will be able to set those directly from the handsets, and not just the Web, next year.
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Shopping. You can buy ring tones and images on the phone from the Vault Disney archives. But the menu is buried. Meanwhile, an easier-to-find menu dubbed Shop Family doesn't actually let you shop for anything. Instead, it's a repository, Disney says, for such things as system updates.
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Locate me. The Disney GPS service worked quite well. It takes up to a minute or so. Based on tests in Northern New Jersey and Manhattan, the service seemed reasonably accurate — generally within 50 yards.
On Sprint location phones I've tested, youngsters receive text alerts each time they are being tracked; they don't know they're being tracked on the Disney phone. Parents cannot set up "safety checks," as with Sprint, that let them know when a child has arrived at a designated location.
As part of the basic service, a parent gets five free location requests per month, after which they pay 49 cents each. That seems high.
At $110 each, the LG phones aren't cheap, either. (Pantech's phones are $60.) A monthly family plan with two lines and 450 daytime minutes starts at $60. Additional lines cost $10 a month (on top of the cost of an extra phone).
The Disney Mobile phones mostly perform as advertised. Let the negotiations with your kids begin.
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http://www.usatoday.com/tech/columni...y-mobile_x.htm)
Kids and Cell Phones?
Trying to stay focussed on:
~Valeen~
Happy Holidays to all my tPF friends!
Click 
She carries it in her (like her Mommy!)
