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BBC to charge for viewing on phones

Nicholas Hellen Published: 5 March 2016
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Legislation will close a loophole that lets ‘freeloaders’ watch shows via the iPlayer service Legislation will close a loophole that lets ‘freeloaders’ watch shows via the iPlayer service (Alamy)

THE BBC is to force users of smartphones and tablets to pay the annual £145.50 licence fee to watch its programmes on their mobile devices.

They will be caught by new legislation intended to close a loophole that lets “freeloaders” watch as many BBC shows on its iPlayer catch-up service as they like without paying. The BBC says the loophole is costing it £150m a year.

Viewers may need a password linked to each television licence that they would have to enter before they could watch live or catch-up programmes.

This is similar to the system used by Netflix, Sky Go and the Spotify music streaming service.

Experts say the BBC would have to encrypt the signal for its services including BBC1, BBC2 and BBC4 because otherwise it would still be possible to watch live programmes free. However, the corporation is concerned this could pave the way towards replacing the

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