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Claire Enders, founder and chief executive of Enders Analysis, said the move had come as a surprise given that the grounds for intervention appeared relatively weak.

But she said Nandy, an ally of Andy Burnham, who is set to become Britain's next prime minister this month, appeared to be using the prospect of delay to secure commitments.

"Substance is never that important," she said. "What ​really matters is making big promises, way in advance of events. And this intervention seems to be structured in order to attain that."

Shareholders of Nexfibre, which agreed to acquire Netomnia in February, confirming a previous FT report, have previously expressed a desire for further acquisitions in the fragmented sector, which has more than £9bn of net debt, according to Enders Analysis.

“OpenAI has refused to share chat contents with advertisers (it cannot risk eroding user trust), making external verification a requirement to prove effectiveness and build the necessary advertiser trust to transition into being a core part of media budgets,” said Claire Holubowskyj, senior research analyst at Enders Analysis.

“It proves performance but can’t deliver it: OpenAI is still developing the model for chatbot-native advertising and is yet to land on a truly differentiated format,” Holubowskyj said.

Karen Egan, managing director of telecoms at Enders Analysis, said it was “difficult to see any negatives” with the deal. 

“It offers a way of sharing the substantial cost of serving multinational customers. Telecoms is a scale business, and once outside your home market it’s very difficult to have that scale without partnering up,” she said, adding that the equalisation payment was “quite a boon in a world where cash is all-important”. 

Karen Egan, head of telecoms at Enders Analysis, said the move to prioritise the UK made a lot of sense. “A lot of the international expansion was just folly really, and more suitable for different times when the industry had more growth in it, and was much less competitive,” she said. “The priority has become much more getting your own house in order domestically.”

Headcount at tech’s big five of Apple, Meta, Google, Microsoft and Amazon has been effectively flat since 2022, according to figures from Enders Analysis.

“Proving to the market that AI can deliver a productivity dividend is critical as one of the use cases for the technology,” analysts at Enders noted. “‘Right sizing’ the overall headcount becomes the headline example.”

The BBC spends roughly £300m ($395m) a year on terrestrial-TV transmission, according to Enders Analysis, a media-research firm. Mobile-network operators covet the spectrum for 5G.