Alltel childproofs mobile phones

Alltel Wireless today announced the launch of Axcess Family Finder, a GPS tracking application designed to increase safety for adolescent users and peace of mind for their parents. Over the Web or through their own mobile phones, parents will be able to locate children, manage permissions and receive alerts on their children’s whereabouts.

The technology provides Alltel customers with an interactive map to monitor their children and use GPS to locate the child’s phone and get instant access to his or her location. By registering online with a user name and password, parents also have the option of creating “scheduled checks” around specific locations to receive an automatic notification via text message when the child has arrived at a specific location. For instance, parents will receive a text indicating when their son arrives at school or, on the flipside, GPS-confirmation that their daughter is not attending a known party spot on Friday night.

Alltel’s announcement marks the latest in the trend of GPS family tracking services starting to spread throughout the U.S. Last year Disney launched its own MVNO, Disney Mobile, entirely focused on parental control and family communications in the U.S. Although the virtual network operator ultimately failed in the U.S. and Europe, shutting down in September, Disney this week announced it will try its family-oriented services again in Japan over mobile operator Softbank’s network. Disney Mobile’s family tracking service has also had more success as a standalone service in North America. Sprint has been deploying WaveMarket’s location-based services suite, the same service Alltel is using, to power its tracking service for families in the U.S. since April of last year.

In another move to keep up with advanced safety offerings, Alltel this week announced a partnership with mobile Internet solutions provider Bytemobile to launch Alltel Parental Controls, a content filtering application available free of charge beginning in February 2008. The application will allow parents to block inappropriate or potentially offensive content from their children’s mobile phones.