European Operators Agree to Child Safety Code

Leading European mobile operators have signed an agreement with the European Commission aiming to draw up a voluntary code over the next year to implement ways to protect children from accessing inappropriate content through mobile phones.

The companies, including Vodafone, Deutsche Telekom and Orange Group, agreed to support controls on access to adult material, awareness-raising campaigns for parents and children and to fight illegal content.

In an agreement signed with the European, 15 firms promised to try to implement the self-regulatory code, including a commitment to classify commercial content according to national decency standards, by February 2008.

Around 70 percent of Europeans aged 12-13 own a mobile phone and 23 percent of 8-9-year-olds, according to European Union data from 2005. Some 92 percent of Germans aged 12-19 had one that year.

Mobile phones can be used to access the Internet as well as download games, music and videos.
EU Telecommunications Commissioner Viviane Reding said the accord "is an important step forward for child safety" and that the EU's executive body "will monitor very closely the implementation of today's agreement."

But she acknowleged that parents play the primary role when it comes to protecting their children. "It is not only the question of the mobile operators, it is also the question of parents, of teachers, of industry, of public authorities, so the society as a whole," she said.

GSM Europe, which represents some 147 operators, also conceded that it could not control much of the content that is available to mobile telephone users. "Clearly that is a question of parents, it is education. We can't force children to act the way we want them to do but we can try to protect them," said its chairwoman Kaisu Karvala. (Source)