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Swisscom's recent acquisition of 82% of Fastweb, among the largest altnets in Europe, provides the context for a much-needed strategic review. Fastweb is the principal competitor to Telecom Italia in the supply of telecoms services to business and residential customers, delivered mainly over its own network, which developed through local loop unbundling. Fastweb's has a sterling reputation with customers (in relation to TI's generally poor one). In this context, further network expansion should top Swisscom's review agenda, as well as Fastweb's IPTV offer, which has not proved to be a commercial success

Channel 4's digital diversification strategy is a topic we first considered in 2002. At that time, we urged Channel 4 to husband its resources to meet its public service remit and maintain audiences on its terrestrial service, rather than diversify into new digital satellite channels. If anything, the progress of time has reinforced our conclusion that Channel 4's digital diversification strategy is risky. The risks for Channel 4 are greater than for the BBC, since Channel 4's public service remit is funded by advertising alone

Trinity Mirror’s 2007 interim results announcement produced the shock news of an expected £150 million shortfall in its disposals of two regional newspaper divisions and its sports addition

The loss of Sky basic channels, strong competition and a maturing broadband market have combined to weaken Virgin Media’s top line results sufficiently to cause cash flow to decline

Virgin Media has recently upped its mobile prices both within the ‘quad-play’ and on the Virgin Mobile standard prepay product

Apple revealed an updated iPod range to stimulate demand in the run up to the all important Christmas quarter, when iPod revenues typically account for 50% of Apple’s totals

Carphone Warehouse is seeking to position itself as an impartial guide to the broadband products from 6 different brands, although it is not selling the product sets of BT, Sky or Tiscali

The Office of Fair Trading (OFT) has confirmed receipt of a formal request from ITV plc for a review of the Contract Rights Renewal (CRR) remedy and will announce its decision whether to proceed before the year is over

Apple has now launched downloads of 28 US TV series in the UK, hoping to drive demand for portable video watching on iPod or for home viewing via Apple TV