What a fabulous perversion of the licence fee concept! The fee is meant to enable the BBC to provide independent journalism in the UK, and so they now decide that something that's not funded by the fee is not available in the Uk???
The same goes for their BBC World TV channel. It is available on pan-European satellite within the UK but reception is, as far as I'm aware, actually illegal (or at least breaking the terms of the TV licence) as it contains advertising.
The channel is actually quite good--I've watched it in the US quite a lot, to keep up with news from home, but it is a slightly weird feeling sometimes to see "this BBC news programme is brought to you by 1st Source Bank." (I believe it is relayed by a local / regional public TV channel where my partner lives, so this sponsor tag could be added by them.)
Incidentally, if you use the Opera Mini mobile browser to view the BBC News website, you see advertising on the page as it uses proxies in Norway and the US to compress the pages.
How bizarrely stupid.