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Positive Q3 FY 2006 results and the announcement of a possible flotation have raised speculation that Sky Italia may be gearing itself up to follow BSkyB’s entry into broadband 

BT’s launch of ‘Total Broadband’ represents a timely improvement in the value proposition for BT’s residential broadband customers but its impact will depend crucially on the success of BT Vision and other related services yet to be launched 

ITV plc national advertising revenues (NAR) from ITV1 fell by £50 million in 2005. This was caused chiefly by a loss of more than 6% in weighted share of commercial impacts in 2004, which enables a proportionately similar reduction in 2005 ITV1 NAR under the CRR remedy. It was offset by total TV NAR growth of about 2.5% in 2005 

BT is clearly positioning its new, 21CN-based wholesale services as an economically viable alternative to both DIY and wholesale LLU 

Here are the main points of the evidence I gave on 9 May 2006 before the House of Commons Select Committee for Culture, Media & Sport joint meeting with Trade and Industry Committee. I was questioned by the chairman, John Whittingdale MP OBE, and committee members, John Price MP and Helen Southworth MP.

Pipex’s strategy is sophisticated, but its success depends to a large extent on implementation problems at Carphone Warehouse and Tiscali 

True to pre-launch speculation, BSkyB has entered broadband with a price-cutting bang that will have sent tremors round the rest of the industry.

AOL UK offers buyers of its internet access business the prospect of instant scale in broadband, enabling 1,000 exchanges to be unbundled on a shared LLU basis. However, it has relatively few of the telephony customers which are necessary to exploit full LLU 

Spain’s top football club FC Barcelona (Barça) has threatened to withdraw its broadcast licence from Sogecable unless it matches an offer from Mediapro that is almost double the current annual fee for the two football seasons commencing 2006/2007 

The present TV advertising slump appears due to a uniquely British combination of very rapid digital TV growth and singular advertising airtime regulations that include the Contract Rights Renewal (CRR) remedy 

The UK market for fixed line telecoms services is undergoing huge change. Local loop unbundling is increasing price erosion in both broadband and telephony. BSkyB, BT and Orange are all planning to launch video services provided over DSL. Fixed line players unable to offer more than one service over the same network infrastructure are up for sale.

The cuts are not as bad as many had feared, and the impact on service revenue for the GSM operators will be de minimus: less than 1% at worst and a probable positive impact for O2, depending on the future level of RPI inflation. The impact will be far worse for H3G and reduce growth by about 3-4% each year until 2010/2011 

The UK continues to be the largest and fastest growing national digital TV (DTV) market in Europe. We now expect 75% of UK TV homes to be equipped with digital reception by the end of 2006, rising to over 85% by the commencement of digital switchover in autumn 2008.

We have argued that mobile operators offering free broadband makes little sense from an economic perspective, and it now appears that it has little draw for consumers as well (which is lucky given its very high cost)

A large number of mobile operators are launching ‘convergence’ offers in Europe (including Vodafone across all its major subsidiaries), and this poor result in the UK suggests that this will prove a needless distraction for them