Watch BBC World News Live Stream – BBC TV Abroad Free

There’s plenty of places where you can get News and current affairs information online. However many free sources are covered in adverts and sponsors or come with a heavy political bias. Producing decent world news coverage costs lots of money and it’s no surprise that many sources are heavily funded simply to promote specific agendas. However if it’s bias or adverts you’re trying to avoid, it can be difficult to locate a decent source of global news coverage.

News Coverage on the Internet

That’s not to say that decent unbiased world news coverage doesn’t exist online. Indeed, it actually is all over the internet however just finding a reliable source is where it gets difficult. If you have access to the internet though there are a few decent sources of unbiased news and current affairs. However to focus on the important events, most of us tend to focus on a particular provider – for me it’s the BBC.  Ever since I had the pleasure of meeting the wonderful Kate Adie, one of the BBC’s veteran war correspondents in the 1990s, I will always watch the BBC whenever possible.

 

The internet has of course completely changed the game even with traditional news media, many newspapers are online – some free and others by subscription. Gone are the days where a UK traveler would have to spend a small fortune to buy a week old copy of the Daily Mirror in a hotel somewhere just to satiate their news fix. However quality is still somewhat in short supply online and the BBC is still one of the forerunners even in the digital space.

BBC World News Online

All of the BBC News programmes are available online, you can either watch a recording or live from the website with a couple of clicks and no account. Unfortunately watching BBC News is a little more complicated depending on where you are because the facilities are only available when you’re physically located in the UK, otherwise you’ll not have access to any of the live TV functionality on their web site.

The reason you can’t watch BBC world News streaming online is because for licensing reasons, the vast majority of the BBC’s programmes are blocked outside the UK presumably to protect the value of the license fee. When you visit the BBC TV website and click to watch the News for instance you’ll just get a little warning that the BBC iPlayer only works in the UK

Use a VPN to Watch Any News Station Online

However there is a fix and here’s how you can watch BBC news abroad and indeed any other UK TV station online from anywhere.

Here we use a VPN service called NordVPN to access the BBC from abroad.

It uses a VPN connection, to hide your real location by routing through a UK based server. It’s terribly simple to use, and for anyone who lives away from home a worthwhile investment to allow you to surf anonymously online. When you connect to the BBC News site with the VPN connection active it only sees the IP address of the UK server and allows instant access to watch BBC world news online.

Most Major Broadcasters and News Channels use Geo-Blocking

This technology is called geo-blocking or geo-targeting and is used to restrict access based on your physical location. It’s been used by the BBC for many years to maintain free access to UK based viewers (who have to pay a UK TV license fee) and restrict access to everyone outside the country. The BBC are no alone, virtually all the major broadcasters and streaming services do exactly the same although obviously the locations will vary.

It’s done by checking your IP address and looking where it’s registered to. This is a fairly accurate way of determining someone’s location, although as we can see it can be fooled using a VPN. For many years you could even use very basic free proxies which were widely available online.

Free Proxies Don’t Work in 2024

Unfortunately simple proxies (which you could sometimes find for free online) don’t work anymore as the BBC now actively checks for them and blocks their use. It does seem kind of sad that in a time when the internet is being so widely abused for spreading disinformation that one of the truly independent and reliable news sources is not available to the world.

So although you have to now use a paid VPN to access the BBC, in fairness there’s so much more on the site than before. You can watch hundreds of news , political and current affairs programmes which are archived. My favourites are Panorama and Newsnight which is on every Weekday evening. There’s also a 24 hour/7 days a week News channel called BBC News 24 which you can stream live at any time. This is the same for the other dozen BBC channels, all can be watched live or through the archive.

Try NordVPN for Streaming BBC Programmes

When NordVPN is connected to a UK server you can also watch the British news on the other main channels too. ITV is the biggest commercial stations but there are lots of news shows on Channel 4 too. You can also switch now to the regional news broadcasts too, so if you want the local news from a specific region like Yorkshire, London or Wales then just select them from the interface. You can also get Sky News but you must have access to a valid Sky subscription to watch that too.

BBC Account Registration

Don’t worry that you now have to register to enjoy the BBC iPlayer site, as long as you are connected to a UK server you won’t have a problem. There only used to help organise your viewing and are completely free of charge. You’ll need a valid email address and of course you’ll have to connect to a UK VPN server before you create the account. Here’s where you create a free BBC iPlayer account – https://account.bbc.com/register

BBC iPlayer Requirements

You will be prompted for a UK postcode, but as long as it’s valid you’ll be fine. There’s also a confirmation that you have a UK TV license, but don’t worry there’s no checks and anyway if you’re using a decent VPN then it will completely hides your connection anyway !

I can understand why the BBC restricts access to it’s popular shows and TV programmes in order to resell them, yet the BBC News at 10 is not really in that same category. Perhaps the BBC will one day extend the World news component from it’s web site and allow anyone to watch from across the world like the World Service currently does on long wave radio. The amount of BBC World News live available on the UK BBC website though is truly amazing.

Other World News Channel Sources in the UK

After establishing a connection to a decent UK VPN server then you should be able to use BBC iPlayer for access to all it’s huge news resources. However there are other options available in the UK too which you can use in exactly the same way. Your UK IP address will also allow you to watch the world news from ITV – which is the UK’s largest commercial channel. Their news coverage is excellent too and they have actually won several awards.

Other options are hundreds of local news options on the BBC plus the UK’s other large commercial channel – Channel 4. Finally if you have a subscription to the UK’s main satellite channel – you should certainly try and catch Sky News another great source of global news coverage.

Watch BBC News Live with a UK Based VPN

So if you want to watch the BBC World News streaming and are not in the UK then try out NordVPN and you can see how easy it is to access all UK, US and European News stations online on any device wherever you are.

BBC World News Live Streaming Free

Remember many of the BBC’s news programmes are pre-recorded especially those you find in the BBC iPlayer archives.  For the very latest news you should watch the dedicated BBC News channel which will stream the latest breaking news live.  Follow the details above if you want to watch BBC iPLayer abroad using a VPN service.