The BBC's Director General, Mark Thompson,  announced that the BBC aims to launch an international commercial version of the iPlayer within the year.  His statement "Within a year we aim to launch an international, commercial version of the iPlayer," was made as part of his MacTaggart speach at the MediaGuardian Edinburgh International Television Festival (27-29 August 2010).

Thompson referred to the popularity of British shows on iTunes, where BBC Worldwide has more than 1,000 episodes of BBC TV programmes, to highlight the appetite for UK content around the world.

“Today, in head-to-head competition with the biggest American players, the BBC is a top ten provider of programmes in the TV section of iTunes,” he said.

 “The download market is not that big yet - but think of it as a test-case of underlying US consumer demand for the best of what British TV can come up with.

“At the BBC, we want to rise to the challenge.  Within a year we aim to launch an international commercial version of the iPlayer.

“Subject to Trust approval, we also want to find a way of letting UK licence payers and servicemen and women use a version of the UK public service iPlayer wherever they are in the world.”

Currently the BBC iPlayer is only available to UK residents in the UK with visitors outside the UK Internet world barred from accessing the service.  Many people in Spain subscribe to a VPN service to give them a UK IP address, effectively fooling the BBC into thinking that they are accessing the service from the UK.

Thompson held back however from detailing how the service would work, or whether it would it would be a supplied on a chargeable basis outside the UK although since he did say "commercial" we can assume that some costs will be involved.

We will keep you posted.

This information was reproduced with permission from Alien Technologies