Where’s the cable guy? See him on your phone

• Some parents find peace of mind in the location- tracking features i n smartphones that l et them keep tabs on their children. There are also the dog owners who can rest easy knowing that hired dog walkers are doing their job. And that the dogs are doing their business.

And then, there is the comfort of tracking your pizza delivery.

When Lora Mastrangeli orders one from Pizza Hut every other week, she does not just wait for it. She stalks it.

The moment her order leaves the nearest Pizza Hut, about 30 minutes from her home in Plano, Tex., the restaurant sends Mastrangeli an alert on her smartphone with a link to a map showing an image of a pizza delivery car driving toward her house.

“My husband and I absolutely love it,” said Mastrangeli.

People were amazed six years ago when the ridehailing service Uber let them track the location of their drivers on a real-time map as they waited for a ride. Other tech startups followed with maps to pinpoint the loca- tion of all sorts of things.

New services from Comcast and Time Warner Cable allow customers to see the exact location of the cable repairer on the way to the house.

Comcast began l etting customers track the locations of technicians last year.

The company used to have four-hour appointment windows when technicians could arrive at customers’ homes. Now Comcast has cut the appointment windows to two hours.

“The overall premise is we should always be respecting customers’ time,” said Charlie Herrin, executive vice- president of customer experience at Comcast.

About 30 minutes before the two- hour window, Comcast sends the customer a notification through the Comcast mobile app giving a narrower, half-hour window when the technician expects to arrive.