Mobile Phones: What Is The Cost?

17 November 2009

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For more and more young people a mobile phone is top of their list for Christmas and, with the promise of being able to contact their children at anytime, parents are increasingly happy to buy them one.

Currently half of five to nine year olds own a mobile, a percentage that climbs to three-quarters for the seven to 16 age group.

Whilst mobile phones can offer great fun for young people, and peace of mind for parents, thinking ahead about how to avoid the cost of that phone getting out of control is sometimes fogotten.

That is until the phone credit is used up too quickly or the phone bill arrives. That’s why this Christmas, phone-paid services regulator, PhonepayPlus, has launched its 'A Phone is for Life, Not Just for Christmas' campaign to make parents more phone-aware.

PhonepayPlus has teamed up with Parentline Plus, a national charity that works for and with parents, to help parents understand the ongoing costs of a mobile phone. An awareness campaign is also being run with Mumsnet.com, PriceRunner.co.uk and Supernanny.co.uk to promote better understanding of the issues.

What can you do to protect your child?

As a parent, you can’t be with your child all the time, but you can put a few simple measures in place and arm your children with the information they need to use their phones without worry.

Think Safe

Contact the network provider and register the mobile phone as belonging to a child to ensure they can’t access any unsuitable internet sites from it. Many handsets are now internet-enabled which means kids can surf the net while on the move, without your supervision.

Be Aware

Talk to your children about how they’re using their phone.  Kids love having the latest ringtones and games on their phone but, if they’re not phone-aware, it’s easy for them to sign up for a phone-paid service like this without realising that they might get charged on a regular, rather than a one-off, basis.  This could mean you find yourself with an unexpectedly large  bill or, if your child is on pay-as-you-go, they could use up all of their credit without realising.

PhonepayPlus has seen that under-16s are more likely to sign up to a service accidently or not realise a number will charge them more than the standard rate.  In 2008, people in the UK spent nearly £1 billion on phone-paid services and, whilst most of them are fun and useful (for example calling directory enquiries, voting on a TV show or booking cinema tickets), and run fairly and legitimately, parents should encourage their children to read the terms and conditions carefully to make sure they understand them before signing up to a service.

Read the small print

As the terms and conditions are often found in the small print and easily overlooked, it’s not surprising that 85% of 11-17 year olds rarely or never read them. This can lead to a lot of wasted credit, or sizable phone bills for parents, at the end of the month. 

Parents and children can go to  phonebrain.org.uk/ where they’ll find everything they need to know about using phone-paid services from hints and tips, to jargon-busting, to help in understanding the ‘small print’. The site is easy to understand and there are fun games and challenges to play, for example creating and downloading your own ringtone.

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