As far as the bandwidth … First: software is readily available free or low cost for watching multiple web cams on a single computer. Second: bandwidth is controllable by the business owner … you decide how often to view each cam and at what resolution. Third: in your example of ten clients the profit would be in the $100,000 USD a year range (I would think 10 customers is way more than a single ‘nanny’ would want to monitor) so I bet you can find the bandwidth needed.

The bandwidth requirements for slow-scan video that I am envisioning is nothing like watching videos on YouTube. Bandwidth sufficient _is_ available to many of us here in the Philippines. I’ve been involved in provisioning, fixing and modernizing slow scan video circuits around the world for years, some in locations much more challenging than the Philippines so I know this can be done.

Again, thanks for your thoughts but these are issues to work, not show stoppers.

Liability. First, form a corproation (likely an S corp is better thna an LLC, manystates don’t give much corporate protection for an LLC. Do this with an attonery’s advice of course and use a well-written release form that the cleint has to sgn and fax to you (there are feree fax to email services so you don’t even have to buy a fax machine. I was also going to add but trimmed out of the article itself, you should run the Net nanny type software on the machine you use for monitoring the children as well a son the machine being monitord … that gives proof you or your nanny helper were watching client’s kids and not goofing off in case of negligence accusations. provides safety against accusations of viewing porn or talking dirty or doing anything else bad that perhaps a vindictive child could accuse you of, in anger.

Another automatic feature of Yahoo Messenger is that you can set it to make a written record of all conversations, files sent, etc., so you can automatically account for what you did or didn’t do. It even ahs a built in whiteboard for teaching the alphabet or drawing diagrams t help with homework … all in one free package.

ACtually, from a liability standpoint, my own thought is you would be a lot less at risk than if you sent a teenage daughter out to babysit and she was accused of doing something wrong … and people routinely send their children to babysit as a normal part of growing up.

For some people liability is much more a concern than for others … not all opportunities are right for everyone.

Bandwidth: If you use a decent service like Yahoo Messneger you’ll find bandwidth of little concern … you aren’t watching hi def streaming video and without special software you are only lookng at one cam at a time. When my wife and I were living in the US and she used to video chat with one of her nieces here in the Philippines who was still on dial-up at the time, the picture quality was certainly usable. Wireless DSL as I have, and you do too I think is available over a large part of the Philippines … but, like everything else,YMMV.

As a side note, one of the things the nanny could pass the time with the client children with that keeps them interested and under supervision is online games …Othello, Checkers, Chess and half a dozen other games are readily available on Yahoo Games and all work fine on dialup. I wonder if they have Scrabble too … or would playing scrabble come under the heading of tutoring?

Thanks for commenting and bring up those thoughts, Bob … always good to have a sanity check on some of my schemes

1. Liability. If a kid is injured in some way, you could be found liable or negligent.
2. Adequate bandwidth in the Philippines to monitor multiple webcams.

It certainly is an interesting concept, though!