Sprint unveils mobile child locator service
April 14th, 2006 - Posted in Other
Sprint on Thursday introduced a wireless service to help parents find their children, as it makes a bid to expand its presence in the family market.
The service lets parents look at maps on their cellphones or computers to locate their children who also carry mobile phones. Parents can also program the service to automatically send them text messages at specific times each day to confirm that their children have arrived at home or in school.
The so-called Family Locator service aims to bring in revenue from a location technology Sprint and its rivals are required by law to put into cellphones so that safety workers can pinpoint the location of 911 emergency service callers.
Sprint’s service shows data such as street addresses to which a child is close and the estimated accuracy of the reading, which could range from a radius of 2 yards around the child to a radius of hundreds of yards.
It also notifies children via text message that their parents have checked up on their location.