DOHA: Ooredoo yesterday launched a personal safety service that will allow customers to locate their family members.
This personal safety service will be the first-of-its-kind in Qatar. iMobileMagic, which creates innovative products dedicated to family and child safety, has customised PhoneNear specifically to cater to the needs of parents and families in the country, based on research provided by Ooredoo.
Through the agreement, Ooredoo will work with iMobileMagic to offer the new “Ooredoo Family Safety” service based on iMobileMagic’s PhoneNear cloud platform, which will enable people in Qatar to track, alert and communicate with their loved ones in real time over smartphones, tablets or computers.
Ooredoo yesterday announced a new partnership with Portuguese mobile application development company iMobileMagic at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.
Ooredoo’s service has been designed to provide peace of mind to customers with young children, vulnerable people in their care, or old relatives. The service provides a location feed direct to mobile devices and is equipped with a panic button feature so that the child or dependent can alert their family immediately if there is a problem.
Waleed Al Sayed, Chief Operating Officer, Ooredoo Qatar, said: “Ooredoo is striving to introduce ‘Smart Services’ in Qatar and this family-focused service fulfils an important need for the community. The Ooredoo Family Safety service has been designed to safeguard children and vulnerable citizens, using mobile technology to offer round-the-clock monitoring and contact facilities. We believe in using mobile technology to enhance people’s digital lifestyles and know that safety and security are key issues for every parent.”
Sheikh Nasser bin Hamad bin Nasser Al Thani, Chief New Business Officer, Ooredoo, said: “We have been working with iMobileMagic for almost a year since we first sat with them at Mobile World Congress 2014. We recognised that this was a solution that would appeal to families across Qatar and have strived to ensure that the new service fully meets the needs of Ooredoo customers.”
Marco Leal, CEO, iMobileMagic, said: “The theme of this year’s GSMA Mobile World Congress is ‘The Edge of Innovation’ and the Ooredoo service will demonstrate how mobile technology can improve families’ lives. Our mission is to deliver high-quality mobile experiences through consumer focus, and this Ooredoo service will offer new levels of security and peace-of mind in Qatar.”
Ooredoo Family Safety will be the only service in Qatar that offers all its features in one easy-to-use product. With Ooredoo Family Safety, customers will be able to visit a website and connect their family phones to a shared platform and begin protecting their loved ones immediately.
Features include real-time location and pre-set safety areas so that people with young children can define safe spaces such as their home, school and grandparents’ home. If a child moves outside of the safe spaces, the service triggers an alert to the parents’ phones. The service will also enable family members to send help requests through the panic button, which will deliver the message to all family members connected to Ooredoo Family Safety.
Additional safety features include the facility to protect smartphones connected to the service in case they are lost or stolen. It will allow customers to remotely ring their devices, lock them with a custom message and delete all information on the phone. To activate and manage their accounts, Ooredoo will provide a website and smartphone application for iPhone, Android and Windows phones.
The application, together with the service’s website, will offer a complete family location and protection solution. To ensure personal security and privacy is available at all times, the phones can only be part of the service with the permission of each individual owner.
The Peninsula
