Walt Disney Co. has teamed with Sprint to create a wireless service aimed at families, a move that may herald more mobile virtual network operators built around affinity groups rather than networks.

The nationwide service will be built on Sprint’s PCS network and will launch next year. It will include wireless voice service, handsets exclusively designed for Disney, as well as features and applications aimed at families and children, including entertainment content.

“This is big news in the wireless world because Disney is not a telecommunications company,” said telecom analyst Jeff Kagan. “This represents a new area for the wireless industry to evolve into. Disney is a consumer company with tens of millions of potential customers just waiting to be marketed to.”

Disney Mobile will be part of the Walt Disney Internet Group and will be headed by George Grobar, a 10-year Disney veteran who most recently headed Disney Auctions. The management team includes Rod Egdorf, a former Sprint PCS vice president mostly recently with GM OnStar and Sunir Kochhar, another telecom and wireless veteran joining Disney from Iris Wireless, to head the marketing and product development/operations units, respectively.

Andrew Cole of A.T. Kearney, which advised Disney on its service offering, said Disney Mobile will target two segments: the adult “Disneyphiles,” who already spent millions on clothing and other merchandise bearing Disney characters, and the pre-teen youth segment.

“This is a fair underpenetrated segment of pre-teens,” he said. “This is not the T-Mobile teen market. This will be a high-value niche service--high on revenues but not necessarily large numbers. A couple of million subscribers, which isn’t large by U.S. market standards, but a very high-revenue service.”