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David Moody, the director of strategy and new media for BBC Worldwide, told a new media conference that in addition to charging overseas visitors the BBC is also looking at running advertisements on its site.

'Now is the right time to look at commercialising international traffic to bbc.co.uk,' he said.

The BBC employed the Accenture business consultancy to evaluate the various options

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open to it.

MediaGuardian reports that the BBC has considered charging international users who do not pay the licence fee before, and has even talked about charging licence payers a top-up fee to cover the cost of putting content online.

Any charges that it does introduce may depend upon the recently announced European Commission review of the way in which public service broadcasters are expanding into new media markets.

'Funding must be transparent, and the broadcaster must behave according to normal market conditions in any commercial activities,' said competition commissioner, Neelie Kroes.

The review is expected to look at whether using a licence fee to fund Internet activities breaches EU laws.