Not childish

Phone for peace of mind

Cellular operators have begun to develop the "children's" market segment. Since yesterday, Beeline has been offering the “First Children” tariff, which, however, upon closer examination turns out to not correspond to the name.

Given the saturation of the Moscow region, it is becoming increasingly difficult to sell new SIM cards. Operators inevitably target narrow market segments, coming up with special tariffs. Now it has come to the youngest, which is not surprising, since, for example, in Moscow, almost half of children aged 7-9 years have a mobile phone purchased by their parents.

But here’s the problem: a child is given a phone primarily for the parents’ peace of mind, but the child strives to use the phone not to inform us about the reasons for the delay from school. Downloading pictures, melodies, SMS voting for your favorite pop idol, etc. - There are a great many ways to completely spend the money in your account in a couple of hours. Obviously, such features should be blocked in the “children’s” tariff plan. Paid services are also included in the SIM menu, by the way. Otherwise, a curious child will be willing to find out the weather forecast every hour, and at the same time inquire about the dollar exchange rate. Not to mention all sorts of enticing sections such as “Games”, “Melody” and “Pictures”. And it will definitely fit into the “18+” section. Separately, it should be said about the possibility of using the GSM network to get an answer to the question “where is it?” After all, it is possible to determine where the “tube” is located with an accuracy of two to three hundred meters. It would be logical to see this function in a special “children’s” tariff. It would also be useful to be able to set lists of allowed and prohibited phone numbers, as well as ensure a call to a specific number even with a negative balance on the account.

You can still dream about flexible management of the consumption of additional services (some SMS, Wap traffic, etc. per week). Or at least about the possibility of managing overall expenses. Let’s say, once a given “bar” for daily or weekly money expenditure is reached, all services except voice communications are turned off.

But, alas, none of the operators offers us anything like that. Beeline provided for automatic crediting of an exhausted “children’s” account for 30 rubles, but did not prohibit spending this money on SMS voting. So the “children’s” tariff is just another prepaid tariff in the Beeline line. With its own characteristics, advantages and disadvantages. Nothing more. Well suited for those who do not call very often and to different operators. Compared to the “Family” tariff plan, we see the cost of calls to all mobile networks brought to a common denominator. We apparently owe the reduction in the cost of SMS and MMS in the “children’s” tariff to the actions of MTS in this direction (it’s a wonderful thing after all - a competitive market). In a number of parameters, First Children's directly competes with RED Text, and in terms of the price of voice communication it looks noticeably better (although for those who communicate only within the MTS network, one of the RED options is clearly preferable). If you are ready to spend from 300 rubles on communication. per month you can choose more attractive options: “Mobile” (Megafon) with the option “call for a ruble”, “I want to say” (Beeline), “Svobodny” (MTS), but as a budget tariff “First Children” looks good.

But why was it called “children’s”, and even “first”? Perhaps with the aim of scaring off adult subscribers so that they do not decide to abandon the “Family” tariff plan.

Sergey POTRESOV