The aim of Docomo's "TONE for iPhone" is to cut the price by about 50%, and the challenge is Android devices: Junya Ishino's Mobile Eye (page 1/3)

From the 22nd, freebit group tone mobile will be added to docomo's "economy MVNO". In conjunction with this, Freebit established a new company, Tone Lifestyle. We will provide a dedicated plan as "TONE for docomo". The first is the iPhone service "TONE for iPhone".

TONE for iPhone is a price plan that targets children. If you sign up for the "TONE Family" monitoring service, you will be able to watch over your child and control the app from your parent's terminal. Although it is an economy MVNO centered on low-cost, low-capacity rate plans, TONE for docomo aims to differentiate itself from OCN Mobile ONE, which has already participated in this initiative, by developing services by narrowing down the user base.

Tone Mobile is an MVNO that has been providing unique network services targeting children and seniors from early on. The partnership with DoCoMo came as a surprise, partly because the approach was so different from that of major carriers. On the other hand, looking at the contents of TONE for iPhone, it seems to be an initiative that seems to be beneficial for both DoCoMo and FreeBit. I reached that goal.

Unlike OCN Mobile ONE, which provides existing rate plans as they are as an economy MVNO, Tone Mobile has prepared a dedicated rate plan for DoCoMo. That is TONE for iPhone from TONE for docomo. Originally, Tone Mobile provided "TONE SIM (for iPhone)" for iPhone, but TONE for iPhone greatly revised the price. In addition to the basic fee, the TONE family, which is an optional monitoring service, has also been reduced.

Hiroki Ishida, CEO and CTO of FreeBit, which provides existing services for iPhone at a significantly reduced price, is confident that the price will be reduced by about 50%. The basic monthly charge for TONE for iPhone is 1,100 yen. The price of TONE SIM (for iPhone) will be reduced from 1650 yen to 550 yen. In addition to this, mobile phone voice calls, which were treated as an option with TONE SIM (for iPhone), have become a standard service with TONE for iPhone. The "090 voice option" of TONE SIM (for iPhone) is 1045 yen, so for users who need 090/080/070 phone numbers, it can be seen as a price reduction of 1595 yen.

In addition to this, we will provide two accounts of the TONE family of monitoring services for 308 yen per month. The reason why there are two accounts is that the parent is using a different carrier such as DoCoMo. The TONE family of TONE SIM (for iPhone) is 220 yen, which is cheaper than TONE for iPhone at first glance, but this is the charge for one account. Parents also need to have another account for practical use. Considering that 2 accounts can be used by parents and children, the price of 308 yen seems to be a substantial price reduction.

You get unlimited data, but there are limits on streaming videos and downloading apps. When communicating with such a large amount of data, it is a mechanism to purchase a "video ticket" of 370 yen per 1GB. This kind of mechanism has been introduced to prevent children from watching too many videos on their devices and to control large traffic that tends to occupy bandwidth. This point is the same as the existing Tone Mobile service.

The iPhone has a usage restriction function called "Screen Time", but the TONE family is more advanced because control is mainly performed on the network side. monitoring becomes possible. Geofence is one of them. Parents will be notified when they enter or exit a specific location set in advance. By using the action recognition engine, it is possible to inform parents that a child has gotten on an unexpected vehicle. It also supports "TONE Camera", which uses AI to prevent "self-portrait damage" in which children send photos of themselves naked or in underwear to strangers.