BBC I Player - Overseas Availability

Overseas Availability

BBC TV productions are paid for by the UK television licence fee and rights agreements with third parties. Thus, all BBC iPlayer TV programmes are accessible from IP addresses allocated to the UK only, as of 2011. However, most radio programmes can be accessed globally, with the exception of a few programmes, mainly sports broadcasts, that are affected by rights issues. One quirk is that mobile devices such as the iPhone and iPod Touch cannot access radio overseas via BBC iPlayer whereas computers can.

An international version of the iPlayer was launched on 28 July 2011 in eleven western European countries, after receiving the approval of the BBC Trust in November 2010. The international iPlayer takes the form of an iPad application which offers a limited amount of free content, supported by pre-roll ads and sponsorship, but its core business model is subscription (Subscription costs of approximately £5.00 per month). The global iPlayer app includes some features that are not in the UK version, including the ability to stream shows over 3G as well as Wi-Fi, and a downloading feature to store programmes on the iPad for offline viewing. At launch 1,500 hours of content was made available, of which 60% had been produced and commissioned by the BBC, while 30% had been commissioned by the BBC but produced by independents. The other 10% was entirely non-BBC content, including ITV's Primeval, and Channel 4's The Naked Chef and Misfits. Launches in Australia and Canada followed by the end of 2011 as part of what is intended to be a one-year pilot.

Although US availability was also anticipated in 2011, an American launch date has yet to be announced as of the end of the year.