Boston Communications breaking out of prepaid mold

ATLANTA--

Boston Communications Group, which made most of its reputation in the prepaid wireless environment, this week is demonstrating for the first time its Mobile Guardian application that lets carriers offer real-time Web-based management controls to customers.

The application, which is targeted initially at family plans, allows users to control the number of minutes each user on the plan can use on a weekly or monthly basis. Additionally, it lets the head of the household set up “black lists” and “white lists” of phone numbers that may or may not be able to access members under their plan.

The application, which runs off of bcgi’s Real-Time Subscriber Management Platform, also is targeted at U.S. carriers that haven’t necessarily wholly embraced prepay plans but want to offer some of their benefits, said Tom Erskine, vice president of product development and marketing.

“Why are carriers forcing users to use prepay when what they really want is the cost control,” he said.

Under one scenario being demonstrated at CTIA, parents could control the times that children can use their phones, and be sent an SMS or voice message when their kids are about to use up their allotted minutes. The objective in that particular application, according to Erskine, is to give carriers the ability to target families with children that aren’t old enough to make their all their own decisions but can be trusted with a certain amount of freedom.

In focus groups, bcgi found that parents using Mobile Guardian said they would give kids a phone at a younger age, Erskine said.

In our focus group, [parents] would skew a year to a year and a half younger on buying a phone with this product,” he said. “If it’s an independent teen you’re talking about, this might not be the application.”