Firms can’t protect children from phone abuse

MOBILE phone firms do not have the technology to protect children from abusive and inappropriate calls and text message.

O2 corporate affairs manager Majella Fitzpatrick told an Oireachtas committee yesterday that mobile operators did not have the technology to give parents peace of mind when choosing a phone for their child.

The Joint Committee of Communications, Energy and Natural Resources was told that software developed by an Irish company to restrict unsolicited text and voice calls to children was not good enough.

Chief operating officer with Sentry Wireless, Sharon Kiernan, who appeared before the committee last month, said they had developed a software, Kidsafe, that could be downloaded onto a SIM card so parents could easily control their child’s mobile use.

Director of the Irish Cellular Industry Association Tom McCabe said mobile phone operators decided not to use Kidsafe because of “critical technical deficiencies.”

Kidsafe did not block voicemail or multimedia messages — text messages with picture or video attachments — or eliminate the unintentional or deliberate misuse of premium SMS messages, he said.

Fine Gael TD Simon Coveney pointed out that 400,000 children under 14 had mobiles and felt the companies could work harder to find a solution. “If you don’t come up with a solution, legislators will bring in laws that will. This is something that is being looked at very seriously by legislators.”

Committee chairman, MJ Nolan, said he would like the operators to take a more pro-active approach to finding a solution and to return to the committee at a later date to outline progress made.