A new UK study suggests that 40% of parents are worried about the level of their children’s spending on mobile phones, and parents would like mobile service providers to take greater responsibility in helping them to control their children’s spending. Over half the parents in the survey put their children’s estimated monthly spend at up to £10, although 25% say it is between £11-£20.  Five per cent spend in excess of £30. Based on the number of children in the UK, and assuming 90% of them over the age of 10 have phones, a conservative figure for annual spend by children is over £1bn. This amounts to five per cent of overall spending on mobile phones. The research was conducted among 1,100 families with children who have mobile phones, and underlines how dominant the devices have become in the lives of youngsters. In particular, it uncovers the difficulties parents experience over many issues of phone usage by their children, including spending. There are strong messages for mobile phone operators emerging from the survey, carried out in June 2005 by Tickbox for mobile billing specialists Convergys:
 *Nearly half of parents think that mobile phone companies should be more responsible about helping parents control their children’s spending
*30% say they don’t think mobile phone companies realise how anxious parents are about their children’s mobile phone spending
*22% of those with contract phones (ten per cent of the research sample) are unhappy with the flexibility of options available to them around spending plans.
*Among parents with children on contract, 60% would like a spending threshold to be placed on the phone.
*More than 37% of parents with children on contract would like a temporary ‘stop’  option
*43% of parents with children on contract would like a ‘heads up’  alert when their child’s spending is approaching a certain threshold.
*Almost a quarter say their children have wasted money on premium rate services like ringtones and 16% feel they spend too much of their pocket money on their phone.
Almost 90% of the parents say their children have pay-as-you-go phones, with five per cent having moved from contract to pay-as-you-go because of the size of bills. Fourteen per cent have changed providers on their child’s behalf because of inflexibility or poor value. However, a quarter say their children have sorted out their own phone deals for themselves.

Mobiles appear to be the cause of a great deal of nagging by children: nearly half of parents say they are always being told by their children that they are low or out of credit, and 20% say they feel their children are always pestering them for more money for their phones, both of which are likely to be a source of friction. Almost a quarter of parents have felt pressured to get their children a phone.

Nearly twenty per cent of parents say their children’s life ‘falls apart’  when they lose their mobile phone. Fifteen per cent say their child seems much too dependent on their phone. One in five say that their child ‘couldn’t live without their phone’  and one in ten parents even say they wish they could take their child’s phone away, but don’t feel they can. Five per cent regret their child has one. One of the strongest themes running through the findings is the love/hate view that parents hold on the subject, reflecting the wide range of effects mobiles have on their children and on the parent-child relationship, including stress, worry and family friction.

But despite these difficulties, over 60% of parents say they are generally glad their children have a mobile, and 70% feel more secure knowing they can reach their child, acknowledging the safety aspect. A third of parents are ambivalent about the role a phone plays in their children’s life, seeing it as a ‘blessing and a curse’ .

Jean-Hervé Jenn from Convergys comments: "The mobile phone operators may want to become much more attuned to parental concerns.  Operators need to recognise that parents and children constitute a distinct group amongst their customers who have particular requirements- SK Telecom and KTF in Korea have already taken that step, for example.  They may want to act to ease parents’ perceived problems using technology that helps control spending. For example, parents should be able to register their child’s pay-as-you-go phones to control the level of spend and operators should offer much greater flexibility and options in contract plans. Everything that parents are asking for is possible if the operators choose to offer those controls.

Kris Szaniawski, analyst at Informa Telecoms & Media, commented: "Ironically, the technology already exists to support the type of flexible spending controls parents are calling for in this survey, but only a few operators have invested in it. These systems can potentially support all sorts of flexible billing options, for example, allowing parents to top up their children's pay-as-you-go accounts from the parents' contract accounts, or ensuring certain types of calls are charged on pay-as-you-go basis and others are billed as part of a subscription account.  Many mobile network companies continue to be wary of the potential cost and scale of the work involved but it looks like they will face increasing pressure to introduce systems that can support this type of billing flexibility.
www.convergys.com.