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In 2006, the EU Commission forced the Premier League to sell TV rights to at least two separate broadcasters. The explicit purpose was to encourage the return of some matches to free-to-air channels and to stimulate competition, driving down prices and encouraging more people to watch football on TV The regulatory intervention has had none of the intended effects. Instead, insisting on multiple buyers has inflated the price of watching football and dragged many over-adventurous companies into bidding against pay-TV incumbents The only beneficiaries of the EU’s actions have been the players, whose salaries continue to rise exponentially, capturing all the extra money that broadcasters have paid

EE’s Q4 results exhibited a resilient performance for a market leader, with net adds and revenue growth slightly declining, but likely in line with a weak market

The 4G launch and partial rebrand were implemented in October 2012, and resulted in little customer leakage (a substantial short term risk), but also little evidence yet of ARPU enhancement (a longer term upside)

With the rebrand successfully completed, a headstart in 4G established, and significant scope for merger synergy savings to come, the outlook is positive

The UK 4G spectrum auction raised a total of £2.3bn, broadly in line with similar auctions, although the highest quality spectrum raised less and the lowest quality spectrum raised more than might have been expected

The main short term consequences are as was expected beforehand; Vodafone and O2 will launch 4G services around May/June 2013 and H3G will launch in October 2013

Longer term, O2 and H3G may suffer from their lack of 2.6GHz spectrum, although with other bands likely to come free within the next ten years this may not affect them

The Conservatives have put forward their proposal for a system of press regulation set up by a Royal Charter – an unusual constitutional device used here to avoid the need for statute

Their proposal represents a watering down of Lord Justice Leveson’s recommendations in several areas. Questions remain about how independent the resulting regulator would be, and whether the ‘slippery slope’ towards greater regulation is really avoided

Labour, the Liberal Democrats and Hacked Off, the campaign group for victims of press abuses, have all expressed concerns about the proposal. Negotiations between the three main parties will eventually produce a solution, but are ongoing

Vodafone’s European revenue growth slowed again in the December quarter, to -4.8% on a reported basis from -3.8% in the previous quarter, with growth excluding the MTR impact also dropping While macroeconomic conditions and the decline in the mobile broadband dongle market are not helping, there also appears to be some competitive weakness, with churn increasing markedly in the quarter The new Vodafone Red tariffs are sound from a strategic perspective, but in the short term they do not appear to be helping subscriber numbers or ARPU

Virgin Media had a very strong Q4, with subscriber net adds improving across all main products, ARPU solid, and margins improving to record levels, with revenue growth set to accelerate in the coming quarters

This was overshadowed by the announcement that Liberty Global is planning to acquire Virgin Media to form the world’s largest cable TV subscriber base

The impact of this acquisition on the rest of the UK market would be minor, as Liberty Global is likely to follow the current Virgin Media approach on content, network and pricing