The lowest price plan offered at launch was a $34.95 plan that only included 100 minutes and no bonuses such as free nights and weekends. Tom Shales and James Andrew Miller's book, Those Guys Have All the Fun: Inside the World of ESPN, notes that Apple CEO Steve Jobs (who held a large stake in Disney through his ownership of animation studio Pixar) reportedly told ESPN president George Bodenheimer, "Your phone is the dumbest fucking idea I have ever heard." Service plans In summer 2006, ESPN rolled out the Samsung ACE, which resembled Motorola's RAZR phones and would ultimately replace the MVP. By July 2006, the handset was available for free with a rebate and a two-year commitment to the service. Mobile ESPN had only one phone available at launch, the Sanyo MVP, that retailed for as much as US$399. Fans could watch live coverage from Ann Arbor as Michigan defeated Vanderbilt, 27–7.
On September 2, 2006, Mobile ESPN streamed the first live sporting event broadcast on a mobile device in the United States. On-air mentions of Mobile ESPN during programming such as SportsCenter, especially phone-in segments (which featured graphics of Mobile ESPN handsets rather than the common genericized renderings of mobile phones used by most news organizations), suggested that the network's on-air staff was contractually bound to use it. The content was managed by an editorial team that created original content and repurposed content from 's web site to fit the phone format, thus most of the website's content would be on Moblie ESPN. The application was also integrated with a SMS service, so that the user was able to receive scoring alerts for favorite teams, and breaking news. The Java-based application was able to provide real-time scores, such that the phone was frequently five or more seconds ahead of a television broadcast in updating scores. Mobile ESPN's key feature was a sports application that could access news, highlights, and scores. The service was widely considered overpriced and a failure, though in retrospect the actual data and audio-visual backbone and software behind the service would be re-adapted successfully for the smartphone age several years later, untied to a carrier. Mobile ESPN was a mobile virtual network operator (MVNO) run by The Walt Disney Company using Sprint's EVDO wireless network from November 25, 2005, until December 2006.
Definct American mobile virtual network operator
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