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Sprint Family-Friendly Services
Give Peace of Mind To
Parents
Sprint helps
families stay connected by making its popular child-locating
service accessible to more families;
a Web access
management tool
and
feature-rich
phone with parental controls.
Just in time for
holidays, Sprint has enhanced its child-locating service, Sprint
Family Locator, making it available to more families and
simplifying the registration process. Sprint also offers a phone
with
built-in
parental controls and a
new
Web access
management
feature to help parents limit their children’s access to only the
phone services they deem appropriate.
“Sprint is giving
families the power to stay connected as life demands take them in
different directions,”
said Danny
Bowman, vice president of
product marketing for Sprint. “Sprint offers a variety of
‘family friendly’
tools that help parents
manage their children’s
wireless
phone usage. And,
as the leading innovator
that offers a
comprehensive suite of communication services,
Sprint is
committed to enhancing and expanding these tools to better meet
family needs.”
Family Locator
using GPS
Sprint Family
Locator is a location-based service that uses Sprint’s
state-of-the-art GPS technology to enable a parent to use a phone
or PC to locate a child on a map. The service also gives the
address, surrounding landmarks and accuracy of the child’s
location within a specified radius.
The registration
process for Sprint Family Locator has been simplified, so that all
steps for the parent are completed online. The service is still
permission-based, requiring the parent and child to use a unique
safety word during registration to ensure permissions have been
granted by both parties.
Sprint is giving
the power of
Sprint Family Locator to
more people
by providing parents with a
PC-only option for
locating a child.
For those who also
want to download the application on a mobile phone, Sprint has
expanded the number of compatible parent phones from 17 to 30. The
number of locatable child phones has also expanded from 30 to 58 –
that’s substantially more phones than any other carrier with a
similar service.
Phone with
parental
controls
One of the many
locatable child phones includes the
Sprint PCS Vision®
Phone 2400 by
Sanyo®. The
built-in
parental controls
on the SCP-2400 by Sanyo
allow parents to restrict
incoming and outgoing
direct-dial
calls and limits access to
services such as the
Web and
Sprint PCS
Ready Link® walkie-talkie style service. The phone is
available through all Sprint retail channels.
“Sprint Family
Locator is a valuable tool that many parents are using to get a
better sense of their children’s whereabouts when they’re apart,”
Bowman said. “We’ve listened to our customers and have made
improvements that make it faster and easier to register for the
application and make it accessible to any parent with Internet
access on a PC, regardless of which Sprint or Nextel phone they
carry.”
A recent U.S.
consumer survey commissioned by Sprint found that
54 percent of
consumers are interested
in using
GPS on a mobile
phone to locate family members.
Web Access Manages
Internet access
Sprint
is also introducing a
Restricted/Unrestricted
Web Access feature that
gives a parent the power to
manage access to the open
Internet for all plans on the account.
Web Access is free of
charge and is available on all phones and all service plans.
Using My Account on the phone or My Personal Information in the
manage tab from the online account, the parent can restrict phone
access to Sprint PCS Vision and certain Internet sites that Sprint
has deemed appropriate for all ages.
"It is encouraging
to see that the wireless industry is providing services that can
be important tools for
parents and
have the potential to increase
their peace of mind," said Ken Hyers, principal analyst at ABI
Research.
"It's important,
though, for parents to
remember that tools such as family locating services
are
not a replacement for parental supervision and that these services
do have limitations."
About Sprint
Nextel
Sprint Nextel offers a comprehensive range of communications
services bringing mobility to consumer, business and government
customers. For more information, visit
www.sprint.com.
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