Watch BBC News Live Online Anywhere (BBC TV Abroad)

It’s a lot better nowadays for a traveler who wants to keep up with the BBC news abroad. As a news junkie, I remember spending hours of my holidays searching for British newspapers. Often these cost a fortune and were invariably at least a day or so out of date – yet still I bought them such was my desperation. Now of course it’s much easier, the internet means that nobody is ever that out of touch, you can even find out things like local football results in minutes when you’re half way across the globe.

In fact, the internet means that you can actually watch your normal news programmes relatively easily. This post demonstrates how anyone can watch the BBC News live online, even if they are travelling abroad or simply on holiday somewhere.

So if you want to keep up to date with important topics like Coronavirus, war in Ukraine all from one of the biggest news channels on any device in any country then please read on.

So What Exactly is BBC News?

The BBC has numerous divisions that carry out various different tasks, such as gathering news and selling it. The BBC News division is , a functional business unit at the core of the corporation, is responsible for producing television and radio broadcasts about UK and world events. It’s currently – the world’s largest broadcast news organization, making about 120 hours of content for TV and Radio each and every day.

The scope of the BBC’s News department is truly global with over 2000 journalists in it’s employ. Indeed the BBC has 50 foreign news bureaus all over the planet with 250 dedicated regional correspondents. The BBC covers news at all levels from events of global important right down to regional and local news.

The BBC is probably unique in it’s scope, it has journalists covering all major world events whilst also bringing local coverage of regional news across the breath of the United Kingdom.

Main BBC News Website

The BBC’s online news website was launched in 1997 one of the first and biggest news resources on the internet. It’s read every day by a large proportion of UK internet users as well as millions of users all over the world. The site includes international news coverage, as well as related news stories such as entertainment and sports.

The website was one of the first to use geolocation technology, which is common place now. It basically looks up your physical location before displaying the site. Basically it checks your IP address and if it’s outside the UK you’ll be redirected to bbc.com (the international site) and British visitors will go to bbc.co.uk.

Both sites are full of high quality journalism, although the international version is focused on global events rather then domestic stories. There is another crucial difference between the two sites – the international version is simply a website and contains no access to any of the live news content or broadcasts on the UK version.

BBC News Broadcasting Online – BBC News Live Stream

Most of the very biggest broadcasters across the world stream most of their content online too. The BBC was one of the trailblazers of internet broadcasting and millions of people watch programmes online on their computers. Unfortunately due to the way the BBC is funded, they restrict that content to people physically located in the United Kingdom. Each time you connect to any part of the BBC website, your IP address is checked and your location recorded – this information is used to direct you to specific sections of the BBC website. The BBC online facilities are effectively split into two separate sections.

So if you connect to the BBC from anywhere outside the UK, such as Spain or Italy you will be redirected to an ‘international version’ which contains quite a lot of information but unfortunately has no access to any video or live streams that the main site supports.

Watch BBC News Live

Here’s the version you’ll see, it has no links to the BBC iPlayer application and there are adverts on the site (which don’t exist on the main site). The other main difference is that if you click on the TV link instead of being able to watch all the channels live you’ll just get some trailers and snippets from the shows. The secret is to make sure you have a British IP address for BBC iPlayer!

You Can Watch BBC News Abroad Live

Many want to watch BBC News Abroad simply because it’s reliable news source that captures the global events in real time. If you use this VPN app you can get access from anywhere in the world from the BBC News site..

So as you can see all is not lost, as we can see from this video there is a method to watch the BBC News live from anywhere –

The VPN service we’re using in this video is called NordVPN, it works very well for watching the Beeb from abroad and you can find their latest offers here –

NordVPN Latest Offers

If you choose NordVPN make sure you connect to their BBC optimized servers as they should work perfectly on all devices. Any issues simply contact their excellent customer service (the chat function on their site works best)

UK# 1840-1847, 1850-1863, 1865, 1869, 1873, 1875-1878, 1880-1881, 1900-1901, 1903-1904, 1911, 1913, 1917, 1919-1920.

 

Watching the BBC iPlayer outside the UK

As you can see if you hide your real IP address, and connect using a UK based server you’ll be able to access the ‘normal’ BBC website and have full access to the BBC iPlayer application. Which means that you can watch all the BBC stuff (apart from a few with licensing issues) live and without restriction. That’s primarily the secret to accessing bbc.co.uk an IP address that is registered in the UK.

Which of course means that you can watch the watch BBC News live as it’s broadcast or connect at anytime to the BBC’s wonderful 24 hour News channel.  Of course, there’s much more and you can enjoy the full range of British TV from USA, Europe or wherever you happen to be.

BBC iPlayer User Accounts

Update – during August 2017 the BBC made a large change to their site enforcing the need for a user account. You need to register to use anything on the BBC iPlayer and the live TV channels. The reason is more to do with the functionality of the site rather than anything more sinister. The account is used to keep track of what programmes you’ve watched and progress in any shows.

Don’t worry though just connect through a UK VPN address before you register. Then complete the brief form, it will ask you for a UK postcode but you can use anything as long as it’s valid. My friend actually used the postcode of the the BBC media village which seemed to work ok. The BBC information account is merely used to track viewing preferences and to suggest programmes you’d like to watch, there’s no requirement to put in any personal data in.

Do You Need a UK TV License ?

If you live in the UK and watch any live TV online or on your TV then you need to buy a UK television license. It’s a mandatory requirement and is actually quite strictly enforced. There’s a substantial fine involved if you’re caught without a valid license. Indeed the license fee forms the vast majority of the BBC’s funding.  So if you’re in the UK, then getting a TV license is advised!

However there’s a problem for overseas viewers –

You can’t actually buy a UK TV license from outside the UK.

So even if you want to be a legitimate user and support the BBC, it’s not actually possible. The problem is that you’re not supposed to be able to watch the BBC from abroad, so there’s no real facility available to purchase a TV license.

 

So what do you do when confronted by this screen, which happens pretty frequently when streaming a programme ? Well fortunately there’s a simple answer – click the “I have a TV Licence. Watch Now” button.

Just confirm you a have a TV license and you’ll be able to watch all British TV overseas without problem. There’s no check, verification or license number to input, it’s just a simple question.  There’s no problem about being checked for a TV license if you’re outside the UK for the BBC or any British television.

What is the BBC World Service ?

With all the different BBC services even within the news sector, it can get quite confusing. One of the most famous and longest running is the world famous BBC World Service. Basically it’s a radio service which is broadcast in a variety of ways and in many languages.

Arguably the world’s top international radio broadcaster, the BBC World Service (BBCWS) provides impartial news reports and analysis in English and 27 other languages.

The service is well known across the world and millions have used it for their primary source of world news for decades. The station is broadcast in many different ways in order to be accessible to as many regions as possible. The BBC currently transmit the World service over AM, FM, short wave, satellite, cable and digital radio services. It’s also transmitted in a variety of different languages to in order to reach non-English speaking audiences too.

You can find out how to receive the BBC World Service in your local area by checking out their home site – BBC World Service Sounds.

Remember the BBC World Service is available in most countries for free through BBC Sounds, you don’t need to use a VPN.