It is the UK's favourite digital destination, with a depth of information that would put the British Library in the shade. But BBCi is facing increasing pressure to review its online investment ...

How do they do it? It's a question many of us have asked as we surf through the BBC's extraordinary website.

There are programme mini-sites, competitions, news, weather, sport, a history section, science and nature sections, games pages, all of which are updated with avalanches of content each day.

The answer is very simple - with our money.

The BBC has already set aside £102m for its online service in 2003, and with a staff of more than 1,000 the operation is swallowing up desks at White City at an enormous rate.

But the blistering success of Auntie Beeb's digital venture has raised a few eyebrows and competitors are questioning whether she's working outside her mandate as a public service broadcaster.

There's been so much concern the Department of Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) is understood to be planning a comprehensive inquiry into Director General Greg Dyke's investment.

The news will be embraced by the raft of media organisations who had to cut their online budget with the dot.com collapse.

They each invest around one tenth of the BBC's budget in their sites and suffer further through advertisers' reluctance to advertise in a market so overshadowed by the Beeb.

The corporation's cross-promotion from its broadcast programmes to the site adds further to its monopoly.

The British Internet Publishers' Alliance (Bipa) a coalition of commercial newspaper and radio online divisions has been further enraged at the news a further £135 million of licence money has been earmarked for an education channel.

Mr Dyke and his underlings are currently preparing their defence of the DCMS's findings, which are likely to force a change of direction for the UK's self-styled "number one digital destination".

A BBC insider said the industry complaints were just a case of "sour grapes".

He said: "BBCi accounts for less than one per cent of the UK's internet traffic, so those who say it is damaging or distorting the market are talking nonsense."

January 30, 2003 18:00