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A last minute rescue proposition has postponed the threat of Setanta entering into administration by at least another week, subject to meeting its revised payment schedule of sums owing to the Premier League

The profound commercial difficulties experienced by Setanta highlight the weakness of EU efforts to ensure competition in the sale of live televised rights to top UK domestic football and underline the inflated rights costs that would face any other complementary premium pay-TV sports supplier

Setanta’s survival hinges on its ability to negotiate further cuts in its rights payments and persuade investors that it can become profitable by making the necessary revisions to its retail/wholesale business model

The Digital Britain report’s proposed fixed line levy to fund rural NGA may well never become law, but if implemented, could end up being absorbed by the service providers, with a disproportionately negative impact on TalkTalk Group

The proposed Universal Service Commitment for broadband at 2 Mbit/s looks of limited attraction to potential bidders, but could increase the addressable market for retail broadband by about one million households

The proposed spectrum solution is a sensible compromise which ensures a roughly even playing field between mobile operators over the longer term. There is however still some way to go to implement it, with mid-2010 the best case timetable for the main auction of new spectrum, with this continued delay benefitting the incumbent mobile operators

Under recession-induced financial stress, rival Spanish media groups Prisa and Mediapro have settled a three year battle over football rights, giving Digital+ secure access to domestic football for three seasons

A separate tentative deal to merge their TV assets still faces considerable hurdles if it is to be finalised by the end of June. Prisa needs to raise cash and may still dispose of Digital+ or bring new investors in the merged entity

Although Digital+ is unrivalled on the premium segment of the pay market, we doubt the economic gloom, plus strong competition from IPTV, cable and terrestrial TV, leaves much room for subscriber expansion

Ofcom’s recent statement on LLU pricing has increased the amount which BT Openreach can charge unbundlers for full LLU over the next two years by about 8% overall

We estimate the changes will raise BT group EBITDA by less than 1% over the two years to March 2011

TalkTalk Group’s recent retail price increase is more than enough to offset the impact of Ofcom’s ruling on its annual EBITDA to March 2010, but the ruling could still take 5% off annual EBITDA to March 2011

Sky has yet to start mass migration to MPF and is more exposed to increases in the price of ancillary services, but less exposed to those for MPF rental. Sky’s annual residential telecoms EBITDA to March 2011 could be 10% lower, but this could be reduced if management takes the opportunity to increase the price of retail line rental

KPN noticeably improved the performance of its domestic fixed line business in its full-year 2008 results, with revenues close to stabilising, and positive EBITDA growth of 1% indicating a turning point in the profitability of the Dutch division

Dutch broadband penetration is close to saturation, so KPN’s revenue growth potential will shift from broadband to adoption of next generation access services and subscriber upgrades to higher bandwidth and digital television

KPN, however, is taking a cautious path on NGA. FTTH deployment will depend on local conditions, notably availability of financing from landlords and municipalities, household density and average revenues. FTTC/VDSL is for areas where returns will be lower. ‘Mass market’ deployment will be decided in H2 2009 depending on consumer adoption

In Q4 2008 Iliad added 100,000 subscribers in a slowing French broadband market

A restructured 4th 3G licence call for tender is now expected in March, with a cost of €206 million for a 2x5MHz spectrum block, which Iliad is expected to bid for

We remain sceptical that Iliad will earn a return from this, with the 3G-only business model challenging even with a reduced licence cost and restricted network rollout

Driven by growing broadband connectivity, the internet continues to gain share of media consumption and advertising at the expense of traditional media, hit by the double whammy of substitution to online and deepening recession

In the near-term, the recession will be the dominant factor across many business sectors. The enclosed presentation highlights key online trends in the UK and our current forecasts for internet advertising in 2009 and 2010

There is a reasonable chance that, by the middle of 2010, Ofcom will introduce regulations concerning the availability and pricing of wholesale premium movie and sports content, as outlined in its third pay-TV consultation released on 26th June 2009

The Ofcom wholesale remedy proposals are likely to provide rival retailers to Sky with modest benefits in new customer acquisition and customer retention in the first three years, whilst opening up the prospect of wider competition as the broadband infrastructure develops

The complexity of the wholesale pricing issues being addressed by Ofcom may yet stand in the way of achieving an effective “must offer” wholesale remedy

To coincide with the Digital Britain Report, the Office of Fair Trading (OFT) released its report on local media merger rules, confirming their application to newspaper consolidation although, perhaps significantly, it will ask Ofcom for “views... arising from its understanding of media markets”

Costs of compliance with the merger regime will remain a very significant barrier to consolidation of newspapers, especially for local newspaper titles serving small catchment areas, and we anticipate no appetite for engaging with the OFT

If local newspapers cannot consolidate further in the near future, the recession and ongoing structural shift to the internet will force title closures and job losses and also weaken local economies. The supply of local media to communities will be impaired to the detriment of democracy and plurality