ITN has signed a major distribution deal with O2, which will give the mobile phone operator's customers news and archive content dating back 50 years.
ITN has signed a major distribution deal with O2, which will give the mobile phone operator's customers news and archive content dating back 50 years.

The backbone of the service, which will be available to O2 subscribers with new 3G phones, will be news footage but ITN has also created a range of new products based on its 680,000-hour archive catalogue.

One service will be On This Day In History, giving users a selection of 60-second video clips using historical footage taken on a given day in history, while Secret Signals will offer "funny but poignant" videos looking at relationships.

ITN's famous And Finally? strand will also feature as part of the service, sourcing humorous stories from the ITN Archive.

The service, which launches this month as part of O2's new 3G offering, is the latest in a series of 3G mobile phone deals ITN has struck. It follows deals with Vodafone Live! and Hutchison 3G.

ITN chief executive Mark Wood said: "ITN has spent the past few years developing a new generation of news delivery platforms that will propel us into the digital era.

"Now, we are beginning to see a return on that investment through the emergence of dynamic business models that give our operations a new and radically different commercial edge."

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