The low price, low quality vicious cycle in UK mobile is becoming ever more apparent in both revenue pressure and in network quality surveys.

Policymakers meanwhile demand better quality, coverage and resilience which will be tough to deliver without a more robust revenue outlook.

Without radical change, the government’s affordability priority looks set to win out over its growth one, driving the industry towards (self-reinforcing) sub-optimal outcomes for both consumers and growth.

G.Network and Gigaclear have emerged from debt distress to (seemingly) carry on as before, with sales processes having failed, and a reset that may end with a not-dissimilar outcome.

The altnet consolidation game appears to be in stalemate as VMO2/nexfibre seeks approval for its Netomnia acquisition, but this will result in continued cash burn, with which investors may lose patience.

Altnet pricing is broadly staying low, as they balance the need to maintain subscriber momentum and conserve cash, resulting in continuing pricing pressure on the ISP incumbents.

Q1 saw Netflix continue to display revenue growth, up 16% YoY (to $12.3 billion), with UCAN (+14%), EMEA (+17%), LATAM (+19%) and APAC (+20%) all contributing strongly.

Netflix has thrived in a decade where TV content has been increasingly siloed. With TV appearing to be moving towards more liquid viewing environments, increased direct competition will disadvantage primary TV destinations.

HBO Max’s launch has so far proceeded as expected, although its decision to not commission locally raised eyebrows: this is in contrast to Netflix, whose UK originals continue to garner the most viewing globally.

UK mobile coverage/quality significantly lags that of its European peers; this really matters, for both consumers and the wider economy, and for both existing services and a range of potential new ones.

Improving coverage will likely require a variety of techniques, from antennas in space to antennas inside shopping centres, and fully utilising the entire range of available spectrum, from sub-1GHz to mmWave.

Network quality competition sparked by the VodafoneThree merger and network rebuild could drive improvements from all three operators, but significant government help is required to ensure this.

Referral collapse and AI summarisation have made it harder for content investment to capture commercial value. Original reporting remains the authority anchor of the bundle, but the economics of serving habitual news users have become structurally harder.

High engagement does not automatically translate into loyalty. Sustainable growth depends on three engines: engagement (depth and distinctive voice), habit (repeatable utility driving daily return) and community (shared identity binding users to brand).

Distinctive voice and personality are the moat in an AI-mediated environment. Publishers building branded formats, creator programmes and deliberate pathways from platform presence back into owned products are constructing defensible, post-platform economics.

European service revenue growth declined to -1.3% in Q4 as trouble in France weighed even more heavily.

In contrast to a couple of years ago, the Italian and Spanish markets have the most positive momentum.

Network sovereignty is driving satellite direct-to-device strategies, and may cause some regret about mobile tower sales, which are also proving more contentious than hoped.

We forecast broadcaster viewing to decline to 50% of all video viewing by 2031 (from 54% in 2025), driven by continued declines in live viewing, albeit at a slower rate than the sharp year-on-year drop seen in 2025.

Non-live broadcaster viewing will increase its share, supported by older demographics as viewing plateaus among under-35s—a trend also true of SVOD services. YouTube is projected to continue its advance on the TV set across all ages.

Although total TV ‘usage’ is flat versus pre-COVID levels, a material and seemingly growing proportion of it (~9%) is when nothing is being watched (e.g. pausing, browsing): this is correlated with smartphone usage and impinges on actual viewing volumes.

The middle tier is gone. Streaming pricing is bifurcating toward premium ad-free and ad-scaled tiers. Netflix played the long game—letting Disney+ and HBO Max normalise higher prices and absorb the churn risk, then hiking Standard to $19.99 and Premium to $26.99 to reclaim the premium position once the ceiling had been raised.

The industry has crossed the profitability threshold, but the gap with Netflix widens rather than closes. Linear is still funding the transition—the spin-offs and segment collapses are a visibility play as much as a structural one. 

Ad tiers are scaling fast but monetising slowly. Sports is the acquisition flywheel everyone is betting on, yet the ROI remains unproven—Peacock's losses widened the moment NBA rights hit. Reach is rising; depth of engagement is diverging. 

OpenAI has switched off its video AI Sora, under pressure to streamline and monetise as Anthropic captures enterprise momentum.

Google remains as the dominant US video AI player, with more established media industry relationships. Video AI will coalesce around more targeted, industry-ready tech.

The media industry might not mourn Sora, but the unwinding of the Disney/OpenAI deal means it's back to the drawing board on establishing a model for extracting revenue when media IP is used in video AI.

Ofcom’s final TAR statement offers continuity regulation of copper/fibre networks for the next five years, with fewer twists than expected, (sensibly) not moving the investment return goalposts as the altnet sector struggles to find a sustainable model.

Within the detail, broadband pricing regulation has an unwelcome cashflow impact on BT, leased line price cuts are much softer than originally proposed, Openreach appears to have more flexibility on Equinox-style offers, and some progress has been made on copper withdrawal rules.

Ofcom remains encouraging of altnet consolidation in general, seeing it as a way to enhance the effectiveness and sustainability of altnet competition, but is more wary of some types of deal, in particular those involving overlap such as the proposed VMO2/nexfibre-Netomnia deal.