Another wrinkle: permitted numbers

WOBURN -- Rather than yell at their children for using too many wireless minutes, and threaten to shut off the phones, parents may soon be able to go online and control not only how much the kids use the phones -- but when and even whom they can call.

Boston Communications Group Inc., a company that provides back-office order-processing systems for prepaid wireless plans to big US wireless carriers, rolled out a new software package this month called "Mobile Guardian." The program would give parents or corporate finance managers a package of tools to regulate phone use.

By going to a website, people using the system could register multiple phone numbers and put weekly or monthly limits on the minutes each one can be used. When a subscriber got within 10 or 20 minutes of using up the allotment, he or she could be alerted with an e-mail message, a short advisory to the phone, a voice mail alert, or all three.

Besides capping use for phones sharing a "family talk" plan, the BCGI service could also click off hours the phone could not be used except for emergency calls, such as 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. and 8 p.m. to midnight for high school students. And it could designate "always" and "never" phone numbers: Always allow a call to or from this number (Dad's or Mom's office or cellphone), never to or from this number (bad-influence school troublemaker, loser former boyfriend), and if a parent or an authorized adult is calling from a non-"always" phone number, allot a personal code to make sure the call still goes through.

"A lot of the thinking behind this is the urban legend of the yelling, screaming fight . . . when the 12-year-old blew through 3,000 minutes on the family plan, and now everyone's paying 40 cents a minute for their calls," said Thomas M. Erskine, BCGI's vice president of product development and marketing.

Exact pricing has not been worked out, but Erskine said BCGI expects the service would add about $5 to $10 per phone line per month, a price that might be absorbed in a specially designed family-plan bundle price.

BCGI has yet to land a customer for the service. It does business almost all major carriers by selling prepaid wireless services for Verizon Wireless, Cingular, and Nextel's "Boost Mobile," and roaming services to AT&T Wireless and Sprint PCS. A Verizon spokeswoman, J. Abra Degbor, called Mobile Guardian "an interesting product. We're aware of it, and we are analyzing its worth. We always have an eye focused on any new technology developments that can enhance our customers' experience of our products."

Whether wireless carriers will flock to the product is uncertain. Seen one way, it could crimp their revenues by making it easier for parents to curb the number of minutes that children use. But it could help carriers get a bigger share of the family wireless market by offering parents a way to address one of their main reservations about getting the phones for their kids in the first place.

"I'm pretty optimistic that this is something the end user wants, but I'm also pretty optimistic that it's something carriers will want, too," said Adam Guy, a wireless analyst with The Yankee Group in Boston. "There really will be a first-mover advantage" for whichever carrier can roll out a spending-cap service for families, Guy said, adding that cost-conscious small businesses and government agencies may be an even more fertile market than families.

But Erskine said months of research by BCGI had found that parents are clamoring more loudly for the service than corporate bean-counters are. "For businesses, how much they spend on wireless is a chronic concern, but the consumer need for something like Mobile Guardian is a much sharper pain that they want to have addressed immediately."

Peter J. Howe can be reached at howe@globe.com.