As Internet Usage Skyrockets among Children and Teens, Communications Service Providers Look to Nominum to Tailor the Internet Experience across Age Groups
REDWOOD CITY, CA — December 6, 2016 — With the explosive growth in online usage by children and teens, studies show that parents are increasingly concerned by the amount of time their children spend online, as well as with the types of content they have access to. Engaged parents worry about how best to digitally parent their children and how to provide guidelines that help them freely navigate the online world while ensuring their internet activities are safe, protected and secure.

Nominum™, the DNS innovation leader and first to market with an extensible DNS-based platform that accelerates digital transformation for service providers, announced today increasing demand for its N2™ Engage Personal Internet solution, designed to make digital parenting effective and easy. Made available to subscribers through communications service providers (CSPs) that offer the service, Nominum Personal Internet is used by millions of holds worldwide. The solution enables parents to seamlessly safeguard the online activities of their children across a provider’s broadband, mobile and public Wi-Fi networks and across all devices—a unique feature not found in other parental control offerings.

N2 Engage Personal Internet Dashboard

N2 Engage Personal Internet Dashboard

Nominum’s network-based application allows parents to shape children’s access to both specific websites and broad categories of websites (e.g., social media, gaming, streaming video) at particular times of the day to enhance non-digital family time and keep children safe from inappropriate online content without having to download or install software, manage updates or perform cumbersome configuration actions.

Managing Screen Time: A Constant Struggle for Parents

A recent survey conducted by Action for Children found that nearly a quarter of parents want their children to “unplug” more often and take part in activities away from television, phone and computer screens, but they’re not sure how. According to a Pew Research Center survey of parents of 13- to 17-year-olds, only 39% of parents report using parental controls for blocking, filtering or monitoring their teen’s online activities.

“Today’s youth were practically born with mobile devices in their hands. Unlike previous generations, their digital experiences and ‘always-connected’ lifestyle are highly evolved, giving rise to new parenting concerns,” said Brian Metzger, vice president of global marketing for Nominum. “As a result, parents are looking for ways to ensure their children’s online activities are safe and age-appropriate. Our Personal Internet solution takes the stress out of digital parenting, enabling moms and dads to easily set policies for each hold member and device, ensuring children and teens are safeguarded from inappropriate sites and kept free of online distractions during homework, family time and bedtime.”

Research from Common Sense Media shows that teenagers (ages 13-18) use an average of nine hours of entertainment media per day, and that tweens (ages eight-12) use an average of six hours a day, not including time spent using media for school or homework. Other studies show that among nine to 17-year-olds who spend time online, more time is spent on social networks than on TV.

“Service providers are responding by offering network-based Personal Internet capabilities across their HetNet to deliver a safer, more personalized experience,” said Metzger. “We are experiencing growing demand from CSPs for our Personal Internet solution and we anticipate this growth to increase as parents become aware of and seek out network-based solutions that are easily customized to suit their family’s digital lifestyle,” he continued.

“Nominum’s Personal Internet is a comprehensive digital parenting solution that takes value-added services (VAS) to the next level by enacting subscriber-defined policies across the service provider’s entire network footprint and alleviating the headaches users experience with other hardware- or software-based alternatives,” said Susan Welsh de Grimaldo, director for Strategy Analytics.

“As an analyst, I am often asked by service providers what VAS they should offer and what they need to do to become more customer-centric. As a mom, I am asked by other parents for advice on how to manage children’s online behavior and device usage. Nominum’s Personal Internet is a perfect answer to both questions,” she continued. “It is the digital parenting solution needed to effectively guide children through the challenging process of learning to make good decisions about their digital behavior; it enables parents to set appropriate levels of security and restrictions for each stage of their children’s growth across all their devices. With this application, Nominum is demonstrating its commitment to putting the needs of subscribers first by giving CSPs DNS-based solutions that connect hold activities with personalized, customizable user profiles to enable a highly differentiated, safe and secure experience.”

Nominum Personal Internet: Changing Lives as Subscribers Navigate the Digital World

Nominum Personal Internet supports millions of subscribers simultaneously. The solution is both platform- and OS-agnostic. It combines the best features of proxy-based and DNS-based solutions to deliver unique benefits not available in other parental control solutions. It provides precise and powerful online content and usage monitoring that is simple to use. Parents can set policies to limit access at specific times of day and safeguard access to content for their children while maintaining their privacy. Because Nominum’s solution is network-based, policies are maintained both inside and outside the home, across all of a CSP’s access networks. It is uniquely simple to set up and maintain and can be administered from any connected device.

Every internet-connected device is automatically protected including laptops, smartphones and tablets. With the web-based dashboard, parents can set up personalized profiles for each hold member or have one policy for the entire hold, as well as see blocked requests, monitor hold internet activity and receive alerts about possible device infections. Additionally, the complementary value of Nominum’s N2 Reach in-browser subscriber communications solution allows CSPs to gain rapid adoption of this highly scalable, digital parenting solution. With N2 Reach, CSPs are achieving view rates of up to 90% within 24 hours of launching a campaign, resulting in a cost-effective approach to promote the service and increase subscriber value.

# # #

About Nominum

Nominum™ is the world’s DNS innovation leader and the first company to create an integrated suite of DNS-based, subscriber-centric applications to digitally transform service providers and personalize the online subscriber experience.

Nominum N2™ solutions leverage the company’s market-leading Vantio™ DNS software and expert team of data scientists to forge a clear path for service providers to move beyond a network-centric approach to a value proposition that is subscriber-centric and highly differentiated. N2 provides an extensible network services framework that synchronizes digital capabilities with people, processes and systems across the organization to deliver personalized solutions that enhance subscriber value and brand loyalty, fuel revenue growth and bolster competitive advantage.

Nominum is a global software company headquartered in Silicon Valley. More than 100 service providers in over 40 countries trust Nominum to enable a safer, more personalized internet experience and promote greater value to subscribers. Nominum DNS software resolves 1.6 trillion queries around the globe each day—roughly 100 times more transactions than the combined daily volume of tweets, likes, and searches taking place on major web properties. For more information, please visit nominum.com.

Media Contact:
Nancy Hill, PR Director
nancy.hill@nominum.com | +1.415.309.5185