The BBC will announce on Thursday that it has agreed for the first time to make some of its programming available on mobile phones in a deal with Orange, the network operator.
The one-year deal will bring some of the most popular TV programmes, including Little Britain, The Office and The League of Gentlemen, to the 2.7m Orange subscribers who use the network operator's online portal.
Marc Humphrey, business development manager at BBC Worldwide, the broadcaster's commercial arm, said: "This is a really exciting time for us."
The BBC is one of the last of the big broadcast networks to embrace the mobile phone age. But that does not mean "Auntie" is particularly far behind in embracing a medium that is still very much in its infancy.
The BBC's arrival is certain to be welcomed by the mobile industry and rival broadcasters alike with the availability of short clips (an average of two minutes) from some of its most successful series, including Doctor Who (the classic older series), likely to help the acceptance of television over the mobile as a concept.
Unlike the commercial broadcasters, the BBC's public service remit means it is not exposed to the same pressures as its rivals and has slightly different priorities. The deal took a year to put in place. "We have a duty to make sure deals like this fit in with our public service obligations," said Mr Humphrey.
When the negotiations between Orange and the BBC started back in early 2005, the first TV pictures over a mobile phone were already available for some mobile subscribers.
The two industries have been exploring ways of potential collaboration with the aim of opening up a brand new revenue stream for several years. The hope is that television over the mobile could help replace network operators' declining call revenues and counter broadcasters' problems with fickle audiences and fragmenting advertising income.
Not surprisingly, Vodafone, the world's largest mobile operator by revenues, got the show rolling in the UK when it joined up with Twentieth Century Fox in November 2004 to air purpose-made one-minute "mobisodes" of the drama 24 on its third-generation mobile network.
Since then Orange, France Telecom's mobile subsidiary, brought its mobile TV offering over from France and 3, a unit of Hutchison Whampoa, launched services.
Successive deals with broadcasters to gain access to content has seen a few short-term exclusive deals emerge but in general the three UK operators who have so far embraced TV have access to the same channels.
These range from news channels, including Sky News, CNN and Bloomberg, to Cartoon Network and Nickelodeon, which are generally streamed live across the operators' network.
The Orange link-up with the BBC is a video on demand-based deal, where subscribers pay £1 to download a two-minute video clip or can pay £3.50 for a ring-tone, with the tantalising possibility of hearing Little Britain's Vicky Pollard uttering her catch-line: "Yeah but, no but..." each time someone calls.
Vodafone still has exclusive rights to a package of Sky channels, signed last November. But that deal runs out in April. Similarly, the BBC is planning to take its offering to other mobile network operators. The crucial question is whether mobile TV will live up to all the hype and expectations.
Initial results are hard to interpret because much of the access to the embryonic TV is free. T-Mobile and O2 have held back from launching TV so far in the UK. Access to the TV offering has been limited as most of it is only available to consumers with new third generation phones, where uptake has been disappointing.
The type of content is also critical, with full-length TV programming unlikely to work. "People don't like to stand around doing nothing anymore and the mobile phone can now offer to fill that gap by allowing them to watch short programmes," said Mark Hird, director of multimedia at Orange.
Mr Humphrey believes the success of ringtones and to some extent music videos has shown that the mobile phone is suited to the type of on-demand deal the BBC has signed with Orange.
