This question was posed by former Panorama editor Steve Hewlett in his column in the Guardian:

Is a licence needed for TV on a mobile?
Monday February 20, 2006

At first glance this might seem a perplexing question. After all, mobile phones are not televisions and much of the televisual content they can receive is not in the conventional sense "broadcast". However, the Television Licensing Authority (TLA) - responsible for collecting BBC licence fees - last week scotched any notion that mobile phone and computer-based TV viewers might be exempt. It points you to a piece of government business called "Statutory Instrument 2004 No 692. The Communications Act (Television Licensing) Regulations 2004", part three sections 9, 10 and 11. Which amended existing regulations arising from The Wireless Telegraphy Acts 1926, 1949 etc and the Communications Act of 2003. To cut a very long story short, any device that can receive live TV pictures, whether or not originally designed or intended to do so, must be covered by a licence if you use it for that purpose. What is more, the TLA will stress that 98% of households have a TV so they already need a licence.

Leaving aside how policeable mobile phone TV viewing might be, while the new regulations might have succeeded in redefining the term "television" to mean any device capable of receiving it by any broadcast or quasi-broadcast means, they still define a "television programme service" as essentially a live, real-time broadcast stream. That doesn't mean just "live" programmes but TV broadcast in real time. The problem here - oh do keep up! - appears to be that while the regulations extend beyond traditional broadcasting to cover internet and mobile live streaming, receiving TV programmes on-demand, or say as part of an internet-based catch-up service, appears not to be covered.

If correct, this would mean if you only watched programmes on demand via new services - such as the BBC's emerging seven-day catch-up facility, or in any way other than via a live broadcast stream, however delivered, you would not be liable to pay the licence fee even if you used your old-fashioned TV.

It seems it is not just hapless producers and broadcasters who have under-estimated the true potential significance of new media delivery systems - witness the growing rumble over programme rights - but the government departments who drafted the new regulations may have missed it too. It may be that the statutory underpinning of the BBC's licence-fee funding, rooted in legislation dealing with "wireless telegraphy" from the early part of the last century, could be about to come undone.