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Karen Egan, Enders’ head of telecoms, said the trend was also partly due to the cost of living crisis, with consumers more likely to use a cheaper mobile alternative — something that many MVNOs claim to offer. 

Egan also noted that in addition to consumer competition, an additional battle was also growing between network operators jostling to sign deals to bring virtual operators on to their networks. 

“MVNOs are getting increasingly good wholesale deals from the network operators, who are really struggling for other sources of revenue growth and have decent levels of spare network capacity,” she said. 

Hamish Low, an analyst at the research firm Enders Analysis, told Business Insider that the "macro uncertainty" triggered by Trump's administration would weigh on tech companies.

He said it would make investors more serious about the "questions that were already growing" about Big Tech's major bets and their potential for returns.

"Impressive capabilities at the frontier of research aren't translating into either people's experiences of AI products or the kinds of returns that match the investments going in," Low told BI.

Analysts at the media consultancy Enders Analysis have said that a possible ITV restructuring would be “largely based on the release of overlooked value, if the constituted parts were judged on their own merits”.

In a note released this month, they said: “This latent value would have to more than compensate any lost benefit that ITV receives from the current integration of Studios.

“This is not insubstantial: over 60 per cent of ITV viewing is of ITV Studios and Sports content and about half of ITV’s content budget crosses to Studios, a proportion which has grown over the past decade.

“In turn, domestically, ITV is ITV Studios’ biggest customer — given that almost all the Studios programming that is bought by ITV is local — it can be estimated that around 74 per cent of Studios’ UK revenues come from ITV.”

“Building up more direct response spend is a sensible approach to address more sources of demand, increase the number of advertisers, and be more resilient during the next period of ads slowdown,” suggested Jamie MacEwan, senior research analyst at Enders Analysis. Analysts like MacEwan will be eagerly listening to hear what Snapchat is doing to combat this issue and keep revenue growing during this tumultuous time.

“We’ll be looking at what product changes like Simple Snapchat mean for ad load, which has historically been low compared to Meta or TikTok,” MacEwan said.

It’s been about monetizing it. Unless that changes, MacEwan said “Snap will continue to fall far short of market-leading ARPU at Meta and Google.”

Tortoise brings experience in audio and events, as well as youth (more than half its staff are aged 25-34); the Observer brings a centuries-old brand and loyal following among analogue folk. It is a “complex yet elegant” fit, argues Enders Analysis, a media-research firm.

Karen Egan, head of telecoms at research firm Enders Analysis, said the hands of MVNOs had been strengthened over recent years due to the shift to sim-only services, struggling network operators “very keen to give them favourable terms”, and the cost of living crisis.

 “Companies with existing strong retail distribution systems are particularly well positioned to perform strongly in the MVNO market,” she added.

Research from Enders showed that 2024 was the first year in history when the UK network operators lost contract subscribers, while by contrast MVNOs added 1.6mn.

“Much of this success can, of course, be attributed to the accessibility of the English language, which is a unifying force as a second language in much of the world and in most of the intense subscriber-growth areas,” wrote Enders Analysis head of television Tom Harrington.

However, he added that, given an estimated 40% of Netflix’s user base would likely view UK programming with local-language dubbing or subtitles, there is “something innate in the shows that makes them comparatively more attractive to the global Netflix view than content from other countries.

“Perhaps British exceptionalism in terms of the quality of its television product is not as over-egged as it has usually appeared.”

Karen Egan, head of telecoms at Enders Analysis, said that the Italian business had been “quite a thorn in the side of BT over the years” and that Kirkby “will be very pleased to have done a deal to sell it”. 

“The Italian accounting scandal was particularly bruising for the company, denting confidence in the entire non-UK business,” Egan added.