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"If there were to be a merger between Canal+ and Sky, as some are suggesting, it wouldn't be a merger of equals, and Groupe Bolloré would have to put a lot of money on the table," explains François Godard of Enders Analysis. This doesn't mean that Sky is immune to questions from the platforms. "There's a certain uncertainty about what the next step in the group's history is, for which Comcast paid more than it's worth today," the analyst continues. "For example, the company isn't really managing to harness the power of British independent production in fiction."

The Sun is the largest UK newspaper on YouTube with 6 million subscribers, according to Enders Analysis’ YouTube and Journalism: the News Frontier Report published in February. This will have been aided by two factors: first mover advantage (The Sun’s main channel was established in 2007, vs the Mail in 2012 or the Guardian in late 2014); and its upload frequency — the Sun posted 12 times a day in the period Enders reviewed the publisher, mostly focused on war in Ukraine, UK poliitcs, crime footage and the British royal family. Originals marks its concerted push to broaden into other genres for video, said Enders’ senior research analyst Abi Watson. 

“With declining visibility in search, social video is going to become a more important touchpoint,” said Watson. “In June, roughly a third of the keywords the Sun ranked for in Sistrix’s dataset triggered a Google AI Overview, and that figure has likely gone up since,” she said. 

Chuck in a slumping advertising revenue as ad dollars follow readers to the new digital platforms, the threat of AI content creation in fashion and publishing, and glossy magazines’ failure to create a robust subscription model and Condé Nast “is battling a terrifying storm”, as Enders analyst Douglas McCabe puts it.

McCabe questions her strategy. He points out that in the UK Condé Nast’s Vanity Fair and Glamour, Esquire, Stylist, Grazia and Harper’s Bazaar have all reduced the number of issues they publish and the long gap between each issue has meant many have faded to irrelevance. “Small and beautiful usually tends to be small and less relevant or slowly die,” he says. It is not clear what advertisers, who keep the lights on at Condé Nast, will make of fewer issues.

“Honestly, it’s possibly where the industry could—or even should—be heading, especially given the decline in visibility on search,” said Enders Analysis senior analyst Abi Watson. 

“If The News Movement launches SaySo under The News Movement’s aegis, they risk confusion around what SaySo is as a product,” Watson said. “Repositioning under a holding company makes it easier to sell across the portfolio without diluting TNM’s identity.”

Douglas McCabe, a media analyst, said in a report this year that publishers were losing money as their content was “used but not rewarded”, adding: “Many publishers have used their websites to replicate the article format but the website itself is no longer the primary destination for consumers as it struggles to meet expectations, while AI erodes monetisation.”

Karen Egan, head of telecoms at Enders Analysis, said Bharti had invested in BT “not just because they see it as a sound investment story but because they feel that they have something to contribute”. 

“I think that their vision for BT is aligned with that of the BT management, although Bharti are likely to be inclined to move more aggressively on several fronts — from digitisation of the organisation to targeted pricing initiatives,” she added.

Yet my hesitation grows as a cursory media search shows me reports that G.Network is indebted and may be up for sale. Enders, the research firm, calculates that altnets are collectively carrying more than £7 billion of net debt, with some facing higher interest bills than they make in revenue. 

Regulator Ofcom offers consumer protection should any fail. Ultimately, I, like other users, want robust and reliable connectivity plus good customer service. For now, and for most households, the speeds from part-fibre are entirely sufficient, according to Enders.

Karen Egan, head of telecoms at Enders Analysis, said that in the past the only way to keep up with the rapid development in mobile technology was to buy a new phone. “But now new models are just an evolution of the previous one rather than introducing revolutionary change.”

She said that with better battery lives and software updates older phones can do many of the same things as the latest models and “people are happy to hold on to them for longer especially with the cost of living crisis continuing to bite”.

She agreed with Ives that the average replacement cycle in the UK had doubled since 2020 from just over two years to about four years. “People need to feel they are missing out on new features in order to get them to upgrade.”

“At the very top, people are still upgrading,” Egan said. “They’re the people that are still on the contracts with a free upgrade every two years. They’re similar to the people who lease cars and get a refresh every few years.”