Smartphone Free Childhood gave parents permission to wait. Haven is the network for when you finally hand over a phone. Safe at the network layer, not simply an app they can delete.
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families support the SFC ‘Raise the Age’ (of social media) campaign
I think Haven is an amazing idea and I'm fully supportive…
Haven looks awesome. It's really exciting and it sounds like something that would really help parents and kids.
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Founder advised in government consultation on social media ban for under-16s
No commitment. No payment.
Simply add your name to the waitlist to signal your support. It will help us build the mobile network we all want to exist.
Your first month is on us when we launch — plus one extra free month for every parent you invite who signs up.
We're proving there's enough demand to launch. The first 1,000 to sign up will be offered lifetime founding pricing (£25 eSIM, £8/month, locked for life) when we launch. It's your option, not a commitment.
Founding spots: open now · first 1,000 only
Most networks are neutral. We're not. We think children deserve a network with opinions, and the backbone to act on them.
We offer basic calling and SMS plans designed for under-14s. A phone to reach parents, not a portal to everything.
Haven is built for it. A full smartphone plan that's safe by default. Not locked down, just sensibly configured.
We block social platforms by default on under-16 plans. Not because teenagers are bad. Because algorithms designed to addict adults shouldn't be let loose on children.
Blocked at the network layer, not an app your child can uninstall. If it exists to circumvent safety tools, it doesn't exist on Haven.
Rich has played an important role in the Smartphone Free Childhood journey since day one, both locally and across the UK.
Rich has been a key person in helping to launch and drive the national discussion around safer use of technology for children across the UK.
Apps get uninstalled. Wi-Fi stops at the front door. The mobile network, the layer that's always there, has never been built with the principles of The Anxious Generation or the Smartphone Free Childhood movement at its core. Haven is that.
Most parents we speak to assume "parental controls" is one thing. It isn't. There are four separate layers where safety can live, and each one has a different gap a child can walk through.
Screen Time, Family Link. Built into the phone. Good for bedtime limits.
The gap: a child who learns the passcode, or factory-resets the device, turns them off in under a minute.
Bark, Qustodio, and the rest. More powerful than device settings.
The gap: they're apps. Apps can be uninstalled, force-stopped, or starved of permissions. One per device, forever renewed.
Router-level filtering. Blocks harmful sites on your home network.
The gap: they stop at the front door. The moment your child's phone switches to mobile data (walking to school, on the bus), the filter is gone.
The layer that's always there. Every app and message passes through it.
The gap: until now, no UK network has been designed with this in mind.
Haven is the fourth layer, done properly.
Most parental controls run on the device or in an app, which means they can be toggled off, uninstalled, or worked around by any child with ten minutes and a YouTube tutorial. Haven's safety is wired into the SIM itself. It travels with the phone, works on Wi-Fi and mobile data, and can't be removed without removing the SIM. Full 4G/5G coverage on the UK's largest network. No second device. No compromises.
A model trained on the grooming patterns, coercion tactics, and age-inappropriate content that flat blocklists miss. Running in real time, on-device, privately. We're not going to claim it catches everything. No system does, and anyone who says otherwise is selling something. What we will do is publish how it performs, what it misses, and how it improves. Openly, to the families using it.
A weekly briefing that tells you what matters and ignores what doesn't. No reading your child's messages. No creepy dashboards. Just the things a thoughtful parent would want to know.
Three milestones from waitlist to live network.
We are here.
Equity round goes live to the community.
Founding members go live.
We have experienced, first-hand, products that either see community as something to shoe-horn into their growth plans, or products built by people who haven't been part of driving forward this vital conversation, except when seeking to profiteer.
So we're starting with you. The Haven waitlist is the proof-of-demand we need before we bring this network to market. We've set the bar deliberately: 1,000 founding members.
When we hit 1,000, we launch. That's the moment Haven becomes real to back and ship. Founding members get first access, founding pricing locked for life, and a direct line to the team building the network you helped prove.
In July, we open equity to the community through Crowdcube, so the families using Haven can own a piece of what they helped build.
Our story →Haven is being built in the open, with the families who'll use it. Join the waitlist now and you'll be the first to know when we launch, the first to get access, and the first to tell us what matters most.
Join the waitlist →"I started Haven because I couldn't find a mobile network I'd hand to my own children. Every option asked me to choose between safety and freedom, between trust and surveillance. So we're building the one that doesn't."
Richard Bowdler, Founder, Haven
We'd rather be trusted than impressive. Here's the real shape of what we're building: the parts we're confident in, the parts we're still getting right, and the parts no mobile network can solve.
Blocks pornography, gambling, and known harmful sites at the network layer. Blocks VPNs and proxies that exist to bypass safety tools. Blocks social media platforms by default on under-16 plans. Works on any Wi-Fi or mobile data. Can't be uninstalled by your child.
Grooming patterns, coercion, and age-inappropriate content in messages. This is AI. It catches a lot, it will miss some, it will occasionally flag something harmless. We'll publish our detection rates openly once we're live. We'd rather show the real numbers than claim perfection.
Replace a second SIM your child acquires on another network. Replace the conversations you have with your child about what they see online. Stop every bad thing from reaching them. No technology can, and any product that promises that is lying. Haven is a very good tool. It isn't a substitute for you.
We're launching in the UK in 2026. Joining the waitlist is the best way to get early access. Founding members will be invited first, ahead of any public launch.
No. The waitlist is free and there's no payment now or later unless you choose to activate at launch. We're using the waitlist to prove there's enough demand to build this network. Every name helps. The first 1,000 people to sign up will be offered lifetime founding pricing when we launch (£25 one-off eSIM, £8/month, locked for life). It's an option you can take or decline at that point. Until then there's nothing to pay and you can unsubscribe at any time.
Yes. Haven runs on one of the UK's tier-one mobile networks, so coverage will be the same as any major network, including 4G and 5G. You're not trading reach for safety.
Apps live on the phone and can be uninstalled, bypassed, or worked around. Haven works at the network level (the safety travels with the SIM, not the app) and uses modern AI rather than the static blocklists most controls still rely on.
Honest answer: Haven only protects traffic that goes through Haven. A second SIM on another network bypasses it, and no mobile network can fix that for you. What we can do is make Haven good enough that switching away feels like a downgrade. Most SFC-aligned families we've spoken to treat this the same way they treat everything else at this stage: with a clear parent-child agreement, reviewed openly. We'll share the contract template we use ourselves with founding members.
No, and we're not going to pretend otherwise. Our AI is strongest at pattern-based threats (grooming scripts, coercion tactics, known categories of harmful content) and weaker at one-off, novel, or deeply context-dependent situations. We'll publish detection rates openly once we're live, and we'll tell you when we get it wrong. This is one layer of safety, not the only one.
Every product gets things wrong. What matters is what happens next. Founding members get a direct review path on any flag or block, a clear appeal process, and a published post-mortem whenever we make a meaningful mistake. No quiet fixes, no corporate deflection. We'd rather be the network that tells you when it failed than the one that hopes you don't notice.
The evidence is clear: social media platforms are algorithmically designed to maximise engagement, and that design is harmful to developing brains. We block them by default on under-16 plans. Parents who want to unlock specific platforms for older teenagers can do so, but the default is off, not on.
VPNs and proxies exist, in this context, for one reason: to circumvent safety controls. We block them at the network layer. A child who genuinely needs a VPN for privacy or security reasons is a conversation worth having, but it's not the default use case, and we're not pretending it is.
No. Haven is being built privacy-first. Detection happens on-device wherever possible, parents see signals and summaries rather than content, and we'll publish a clear, plain-English data policy long before launch.
Haven's planned retail price is £12–15/month per SIM. Founding members (the first 1,000 families to join the waitlist) will get a locked-for-life price well below that. We'll announce the exact figure before we launch.
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