CTIA: mPortal powering Disney family app

LAS VEGAS--Pantech and LG Electronics won the handset deals. Telcordia won the data hosting contract. And now mPortal put the world on notice that it is powering Disney Mobile’s new Family Center communications and access portal.

Disney’s launch of its MVNO Wednesday surprised the industry with its focus on parental control and family communications applications over its own content. The service basically gives parents control over the voice, data and messaging applications their children use, allowing them to restrict access to any service at different times of day or different days of the week, pre-approve or restrict content to different numbers, and monitor the children’s real-time usage and even their physical locations through GPS. Disney Mobile is focusing less on family content like Mickey and more on how the family unit interacts.

To build that functionality into its service, Disney needed an on-deck application and user interface tightly integrated with all elements of the phone as well as a hefty data management and delivery system, both of which mPortal was happy to provide, said D.P. Venkatesh, CEO and founder of mPortal. For the last several months, mPortal has been working closely with Disney and its two handset providers to tailor its Springboard Smart Client and Content Delivery Manager for its unique set of services. Venkatesh said Disney had very specific requirements for the portal, resulting in the most sophisticated portal designs mPortal has ever undertaken. Each is built specifically for the device it powers, lying just over the operating system layer. Disney didn’t even want to deal with hassles of a WAP browser, Venkatesh said—the portal establishes a direct secure IP connection back to the content manager.

Along with being the most complicated portal it has built, it is also the most significant from a business standpoint. Disney will be mPortal’s first major U.S. contract announced, though it does power the UI for Reliance Infocom’s data service in India. Before the Disney Mobile deal, mPortal consulted on the portal launch of Disney’s other MVNO, Mobile ESPN, but this is this the first time the company has bought its solution outright, Venkatesh said. With the publicity and complexity of the Disney portal, however, Venkatesh said he expects other carriers to take notice.

“We think once this thing is launched, other carriers will call us up and say, ‘How do we get this?’” he said. “This is completely unique in the industry.”

In addition to mPortal, Telecordia and the two handset vendors, Disney Mobile announced its distribution partner for the new service at CTIA. Brightpoint will extend its kiosk agreement with Mobile ESPN to Disney Mobile, selling both services side-by-side in 60 malls across the country. Brightpoint will also act as the master dealer for phone distribution and manage Disney’s relationship with all retailers and independent dealers.