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Under the proposals, BBC.com - which currently points to an international version of the main BBC.co.uk site - will become a separate site for visitors from outside the UK, who account for around a third of the 3.2 billion page views that the BBC site gets every month.

The BBC had previously considered charging non-UK residents for access to its site but that idea has now been dropped in favour of what BBC Worldwide director of strategy

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David Moody said would be 'appropriate' advertising. He promised that there will be no pop-ups.

'Given the scale of traffic to our site, we have the ability to establish the BBC as a global brand for our content,' he said, while not saying very much at all.

Selling advertising should also go some way to recouping the $375,000 that the BBC paid during the dotcom boom for the .com domain.

The corporation is also deciding whether to launch a commercial version of its Interactive Media Player. Currently the software lets UK residents view its TV programmes for free for seven days after they were first broadcast.

Any additional commercial activities will be strongly criticised by the BBC's main competitors, who argue that its licence-fee funding gives it an unfair advantage and damage competition. The BBC will also have to be careful that it does not fall foul of EU rules on the use of licence fees to fund Internet ventures.