With the World Cup just around the corner, you may be tempted to catch a match live while at work by watching streaming media over your computer. However, today our UK office received a letter from the TV Licensing Agency which may stop you in your tracks if your offices are located in that country.

The letter advises that “…if your staff or customers watch television programmes as they are being shown on TV, including live World Cup games, then your organization needs to be covered by a TV licence.  This is the case whether they use a laptop, computer, TV set, mobile (cell) or any other device owned by your business”.

The key phrase here is  “owned or provided by your business” as the letter goes on to advise of an exception. Apparently, if your staff watch television programmes as they’re being shown on  television USING THEIR OWN DEVICE, and they haven’t connected it to the mains or an aerial, then they’re covered by their own home TV Licence, if they have one.

A full explanation of the situation is available on the TV Licensing agency web site  http://www.tvlicensing.co.uk/check-if-you-need-one/business-and-organisations/

Of course, the quickest way to ensure your organization doesn’t fall foul of this regulation is to either buy a licence or impose a blanket ban on anyone watching TV while at work. However, for some fans it’s going to be really hard to resist just taking a quick look online using office equipment.  Alternatively, they may decide to bring in their own devices.

Either way, if you are an owner, director or manager you need to know what is being accessed over your company’s network in case, at worst, it is illegal or more innocently (but probably of greater significance) impacting the performance of other networked applications.  This is where you may find our AppQoS monitoring products useful as they can show you how the network is being used and who’s accessing what, including World Cup TV.

We really wish our team well and hope that this is the year when we bring home the World Cup, while at the same time ensuring we all stay on the right side of the regulations.