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MVNOs, as they are known, account for 19 per cent of the UK market, thinks Enders Analysis. On current trends they could surpass a quarter by 2028, according to Assembly Research. 

It is possible. Traditional mobile carriers have strong brands, their own stores, and tie in users through combined network and handset deals. But as handsets last longer and refurbished kit gets more popular, customers are increasingly looking beyond traditional carriers, helped by online price comparison. In the UK, the proportion of handsets sold without a contract has risen about 50 per cent since the pandemic, according to Enders Analysis. 

“These linear networks are still profitable and still throw off more cash than streaming, mainly because they now spend almost nothing on programming,” says Tom Harrington, analyst at Enders Analysis.

“But they’re declining and public companies are about improving your metrics, not whether those metrics are fundamentally good in the first place. It's never about actual profitability or actual revenue. It's the increase of revenues that public companies prefer and we're at the tail end of the transition from linear to digital.”

“Movies are always a risk, but HBO has been profitable, very profitable, for a very long time,” says Harrington. “Streaming is the new cable in America. There will be consolidation there – people don’t need five or six subscriptions – but the value in how video is monetised is moving from one place to another, and so there has to be this restructuring.”

The UK has hundreds of altnets that are building out smaller networks to challenge the dominance of BT’s Openreach and Virgin Media O2. Altnets — which collectively serve 16.4mn homes according to the Independent Networks Cooperative Association — have received more than £17.4bn of investment since 2020. 

But they have since been squeezed by a rise in interest rates and a dramatic increase in costs. Altnets collectively lost more than £1.3bn in 2023, according to Enders Analysis.

[WPP’s next chief executive needs] a global vision of the advertising industry and its drivers and challenges. [They need] deep experience of managing and serving unique multinational clients of global stature, credibility with the City and the global advertising community. Financial integrity and experience are a must – it’s a management task number one. 

[They have] to come from a large (50,000 employees plus) organisation that is similarly driven by talent, and must be able to navigate technology and create imaginative partnerships with technology companies.

A single-minded focus on enhancing the company’s undoubted strengths and motivating the talent running the major divisions is essential.

Karen Egan, head of telecoms at Enders Analysis, warned that while growth in broadband is possible for VodafoneThree, intense competition means it is “not an attractive market”.

He is “a very decent man” in the words of Claire Enders, founder of Enders Analysis.

Enders says: “It is an extraordinarily demanding job – physically, with huge amounts of travel. It’s a real global job. And it’s a sensitive and difficult job at this time, because of the number of clients with tariff issues, and trade will be a difficult issue throughout the Trump years.”

Research by the company Enders Analysis said Amazon, Google, Meta and Microsoft have been guilty of “ambivalence and inertia” over the problem.