Children lured by high-cost ringtone lines
By Jon Ungoed-Thomas

The tunes are widely available on the internet and cost up to £4.50 to order on a premium rate line, charged to a child’s parents’ phone bill.

Consumer groups are calling for stricter controls on the lines. Industry analysts predict that children aged between five and 15 will spend more than £130m this year on downloading ringtones.

One ringtone — the Crazy Frog — has become so popular that it is being sold as a CD and is expected to reach the number one spot in the charts today by outselling the latest Coldplay single.

Graham Brown, of Wireless World Forum, a research body, said young children obtain the ringtones by calling the premium rate lines or sending a text message themselves, or they get their older siblings to do it for them.

Companies selling ringtones say they do not seek to market their products to children, but concede that youngsters can quickly find favourite tunes on the internet.

The website of Radio Times, the BBC listings magazine, offers ringtones from popular children’s programmes, including Roobarb and Custard, Bob the Builder and Thunderbirds.

Calls to a premium rate line to order a download can cost up to £4.50. The BBC said last week it was aimed at adults. Disney offers tunes from films such as The Jungle Book, Finding Nemo and Winnie the Pooh at £3 each on its British website.

One of the most lucrative devices for ringtone companies is to sell subscriptions to children for as much as £12 per month. Some children are lured by an initial free download, without realising that subsequent downloads are at a premium rate.

Steve Bungay, 38, who lives near Andover, Hampshire, said: “My 11-year-old son downloaded a ringtone on his mobile, but didn’t realise he was also subscribing to three additional downloads a month at £1.50 a time.

“We sent a message asking them to stop the service and they sent back a message saying ‘mistyped’. We eventually stopped the messages, but it’s wrong that a child can order something like this just using their phones.”

Under industry guidelines, all premium rate text message services can be stopped by texting the word “stop” back. The Independent Committee for the Supervision of Standards of Telephone Information Services (ICSTIS) can fine companies and bar services that do not comply with its code of practice.

Most mobile phones, however, do not have the facility to bar calls to premium rate lines. Alan Williams, of Which?, the consumer group, said: “You should be able to block these premium lines from being called on a mobile in the same way you can on a BT line at home.”