Disney announces Disney Mobile.

They'd been talking about it for almost a year now, but Disney finally announced their new cellphone service today, Disney Mobile. As expected, they'll be leasing network capacity from Sprint (in the biz this makes them a Mobile Virtual Network Operator, or MVNO), and they're going to offer Disney-branded phones. They haven't unveiled any of the specific features of the service or showed off any of the phones (expect a phone to coincide with each new Disney movie), but they did say that they're going to offer a service that "caters to [parents'] desire to ensure the safety of their kids and to keep in contact with them."

[Via MocoNews]

[anthony @ Dec 19th 2005 12:17AM]

Are there any MVNO's that lease network capacity from Verizon? Everytime I hear about a new MVNO it seems like Sprint is the carrier.

[Justin @ Dec 19th 2005 12:17AM]

Ghey.

[Ben @ Dec 19th 2005 12:17AM]

Anthony, AMP'D mobile is a Verizon MVNO. They haven't launched yet though.

Not sure how well this MVNO will do. Family plans are very cheap nowadays and I can't see parents wanting to spend much more than $10 for a kid's phone line.

[JonnyDrama @ Dec 19th 2005 12:17AM]

you know it's coming soon, jobs has touted the iPhone for a while now. If it happens this year I'll be surprised, I'd expect to see it in early 2006 - maybe in time for the next Macworld/event.