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Germany’s Sky platform has shifted focus from maximising net additions to improving quality of new recruits, delivering accelerated ARPU growth and a likely future reduction in churn.

In 2014, Sky will turn back to more proactive recruitment, but we caution against expectations of an improvement in the underlying trend growth rate.

Sky is in on course to deliver its first full year positive EBITDA in 2013, although we still don’t expect cash flow to follow suit before FY 2015.

Virgin Media had a very solid quarter, with cable households returning to growth, cable revenue up 4%, underlying group revenue up 2%, and underlying OCF up 3% despite extra content costs weighing

Subscriber net adds were not as strong as last year, when DSL competitors were weakened by supply constraints, but there is little sign of a substantial impact from BT Sport or TalkTalk and BT’s YouView-based TV offerings

BT’s foray into sport has however had an effect on profitability, as it has with BT itself and Sky, with Virgin Media’s premium content costs rising from both BT and Sky

BT’s subscriber and revenue results continued to show strong progress, with its consumer business gathering momentum even excluding the direct impact of BT Sport

BT Sport had a discernible impact, but this was modest given the spend levels involved. However, the negative impact will only improve from this point, with BT sounding cautious about bidding for new rights

Fibre growth has at last started to accelerate at BT’s competitors, with the potential wholesale revenue from this truly game-changing for BT

Amid ongoing speculation that AT&T will make a bid for Vodafone post its Verizon Wireless divestment, in this note we consider the validity of AT&T’s hypothesis that there is "a huge opportunity for somebody" to repeat the US experience of heavy capital investment coupled with firm pricing in Europe