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Technology Stocks : Ericsson overlook? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: gdichaz who wrote (4276)	9/5/2000 1:20:06 AM
From: tech101	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 5390

Today's kids are as near as your cell phone BY LARRY MAGID Special to the Mercury News mercurycenter.com It was 8:30 Saturday night and my 16-year-old daughter was missing, or at least that's how it seemed. She and a friend were overdue from a shopping trip to San Francisco. We had expected them to get off the commuter train that was scheduled to arrive in Palo Alto at 8:02 but they weren't on board when the train finally pulled in 25 minutes late. Concerned, I started driving 34 miles north to the San Francisco Caltrain station. A friend who was waiting for them at the Palo Alto station called me in the car to say that they weren't on the train that arrived at 9:02. My worry turned to panic, and I pressed harder on the accelerator hoping to arrive at the San Francisco station before the next scheduled Caltrain departure at 10 p.m. I arrived in time but my daughter and her friend weren't at the station. As a technology adviser to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, I'm very attuned to dangers that teens face and, even though I know that stranger abductions are rare, I couldn't get the thought out of my mind. My next call was to 911 from a pay phone. I knew not to use my cell phone because the California Highway Patrol, which answers cellular 911 calls, often keeps you on hold for several minutes before an operator picks up. At 10:30, shivering in shorts and a T-shirt, I answered a long series of agonizing questions from two San Francisco police officers assigned to the case. My heart sank when one asked the name of my daughter's dentist. At 10:45, my wife called on the cell phone. It was the fifth call from her but this time there was good news. The girls got off a train in Palo Alto at about 10:30 p.m. The irony of all this is that my daughter's cell phone was sitting in its box on the kitchen table. I bought it for her that morning and had planned to give it to her the next day. We bought her the phone because she just got her driver's license and we want her to have it with her in the car. If she had it with her on the train, we might have found out earlier that she was on an unscheduled train that left San Francisco at about 8:40 and, due to a delay, arrived in Palo Alto almost two hours later after what should have been a one-hour trip. A cell phone in my daughter's backpack isn't the only technology that could have relieved my anxiety. If Caltrain had a monitor that showed the status of trains -- as airports do for planes -- we would have known that were was an unscheduled 8:40 train. As it was, we were under the impression that all trains were accounted for so, as far as we knew, she was missing somewhere in San Francisco. Caltrain spokeswoman Janet McGovern acknowledged that the railroad needs ``a more sophisticated command and control system'' which, she said, will emerge from the service's current long-range capital improvement project. There are plans to put Global Positioning System (GPS) receivers on locomotives, which eventually, McGovern said, will enable the railroad to provide better information to consumers. Another technology solution would be for Caltrain to use its Web site to report the status of its trains. Some airlines do that now and even if they don't, you can find that information by clicking the flightTRACKER tab at www.trip.com. It would also have been nice if Caltrain answered its phones late Saturday night, but there are no operators on duty after 8 p.m. on Saturday. I'm not putting the blame for this entirely on Caltrain. To begin with, there wouldn't have been a problem if Katherine had her cell phone at the time. Cell phone services are getting cheap enough that it no longer seems extravagant as accessories for your kids. There are numerous plans available including family plans where extra phones cost as little as $10 a month plus usage charges. You can also get prepaid services so you don't have to worry about your kid running up large bills. There are ways to lock the phones so they can only be used to call home or 911 or accept incoming calls. If you do get your child a phone, consider a loss or damage insurance program which, for about $3 a month, will replace a lost, stolen or broken phone, typically with a $35 deductible. Unlike me, my daughter hasn't lost her phone yet, but it's certainly a possibility. Obviously, you need to talk with your kids about rules for using the phone including safety, cost, cell phone etiquette as well as their school's policies for use or possession of phones and pagers on campus. A standard pager would have alerted my daughter to our concern but she couldn't have used it to communicate with us unless we got her a two-way unit such as a Motorola TalkAbout 900. However, at $199 for the pager plus $29.95 a month for Skytel service, it's actually more expensive than a cell phone. My daughter should have called us as soon as she realized she would be arriving after dark. She told us that she thought about calling but was afraid she'd miss the train if she stopped at a pay phone. Calling home from a pay phone isn't much of a chore for my kids because we have a toll-free (800 or 888) number they can use from any phone in the United States without having to call collect or come up with 35 cents in change. Although she didn't use it this time, she and William use it quite often to call when they need a ride. I use the toll-free number to call home when I'm on business trips because it's cheaper and easier than calling collect or using a calling card and unlike long-distance calls, many hotels don't impose a surcharge for toll free calls. The toll-free number rings on our home phone; we didn't have to add a separate line. I also have a toll-free number on my cell phone. You can get such a number from any long distance company. Most have a monthly service charge or minimum but American Telecom Network (888-633-6124 or www.callatn.com) has a service where you pay only for usage at 5.5 cents a minute for calls coming from within California and 6.9 cents a minute if the call originates from out of state. As with all toll-free calls, there is a 26-cent surcharge if the caller uses a pay phone so it's still cheaper than a regular pay phone call if you keep it short. While I can certainly understand why some families can't afford or don't want to equip their kids with cell phones or two-way pagers, I can't think of a reason not to get a toll-free number that lets your kids call home. While there is no technology in the world that can completely relieve the stress of parenting, there are tools that can help, assuming of course, that your kids remember to use them and not lose them. Larry Magid is a technology journalist and commentator based in Palo Alto. Contact him at larry@safekids.com .