EXCLUSIVE: Parental Controls Coming From Cell Carriers

I've learned that Verizon Wireless and AT&T both plan to introduce some kind of parental controls for cell phone text messaging. Though from what I understand, neither will go far enough.

I started looking into this after my teenage son rang up a $657 texting bill one month with Verizon Wireless. Nearly every parent of a teen that I talked to told some kind of texting bill horror story.

Amazingly, there is no way to set limits on your kid's texting. You can eliminate it altogether, but you can't fine tune it. The industry needs to take cues from AOL, which has some of the best parental controls for everything from Web surfing to email to instant messaging. I should be able to go on the VZW Web site and, say, limit my son's texting to a couple hours a day, or stop allowing texts to be sent after a certain number. I should even be able to tell it to block all texts during certain times except for those from me.

None of the US wireless carriers offer anything like that. But after talking to them, I get the impression that the reason is that they've been caught off guard. Until the past year, they didn't think it was necessary. But texting -- especially by teens -- has suddenly gone through the stratosphere. In 2007, Verizon Wireless sent or received 36.5 billion texts, up from 14.5 billion in 2006 -- about a 150% leap.

But now, Verizon Wireless tells me that late this year, it will begin offering parental filtering. A parent will be able to go on the Web site and set limits on downloads, video, and times and numbers of text messages. The company is not yet sure the controls will be fine enough to block texts except for those from certain senders. Verizon Wireless had not previously talked about this publicly.

An AT&T spokesman promises "a new announcement about it soon." I don't have any more details.

Sprint says that some Sanyo phones on its network have parental controls built into the phone, but the controls are more for limiting voice calls and data services than fine-tuning text messaging.

While it's been suggested that parents could just buy an unlimited texting bundle and avoid huge charges for extra texts, that ignores part of the problem. Teens can get so enamored with texting that it interferes with things like homework. Yes, of course, you can just take the cell away or set house rules, but as most people with teens know, that's not always so easy. (Like, these days you want your kid to have a cell for safety and so you can get in touch with him or her, which makes it hard to just take it away.)

I believe this is only a start. Clearly, if VZW and AT&T are going to implement controls, it is technically and economically feasible to do so. As teen texting explodes as a social phenomenon, parents are going to demand some means of control. The carriers that offer it are going to win customers.