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Talk of a merger between the recorded music divisions of EMI and Warner Music Group to create the third largest recorded music group has been simmering for at least six months. After two failed attempts in the past six years, the logic of a merger continues to be strong and scale is an even more compelling objective given the continued difficult conditions in the recorded music market, despite rising digital sales in line with our forecasts. The question is when, not if and we believe that the time is fast approaching, judging by investment bank and private equity interest in the music publishing assets of each company.

We continue to expect group revenue growth to remain positive in spite of the impact of local loop unbundling

Broadband connections continued to increase strongly in the UK in Q4 2005 with 935,000 net additions, taking the UK total to just over 9.8 million connections and household broadband penetration to 35%. For 2005 as a whole, the UK broadband base rose by 60% - one of the fastest paces in Europe. Cable connections account for 27% of the broadband market with more than 99% of other connections provided via DSL.

Sound market fundamentals mean that the growth-based rationale for the bid should prove feasible 

BT Wholesale will launch IPStream Max, a rate adaptive ADSL product, on 31st March 2006, providing a downstream data rate greater than 6.5Mbit/s – a line speed that should support a wider range of good-quality video applications – to 25% of UK telephone lines

We believe that its focus on 3G is to blame, and the company seems poised to repeat this mistake with a focus on the latest industry fad, convergence 

Sharp rise in EBITDA margin to 31% in 2005 as Free increases the share of unbundled (on-net) subscribers from 53% to 70% and retains tight control of marketing spend in the 'landgrab' for customers in France

The new management is teeing up the core UK business for a successful turnaround 

This companion report to UK TV VOD [2005-24] concludes that the number of PC-based video-on-demand (VOD) services in the UK is set to explode in the near future. Rising broadband penetration, to 35% of UK homes at the end of 2005, is leading every major content owner, aggregator, broadcaster, service provider, and network operator to develop a PC VOD service. Will this response to the interest in personalised media consumption enable the PC to take over from the TV as the main source of video entertainment? The short answer is no, although we expect the market for PC-delivered VOD to grow dramatically in the next 2-3 years.

Sky Italia subscriptions, now totalling 3.71 million, have increased by almost 0.5 million subscribers in the last year. Low SACs, low churn, and yet high ARPU, show that Sky continues to benefit from strong natural growth in a pay-TV market that is experiencing a new lease of life thanks to the eradication of piracy post merger of Telepiu with Stream 

With the launch of two new analogue terrestrial services and a relaunch of digital terrestrial television (DTT), the Spanish government has opened up the country’s free-to-air (FTA) TV market. Although we expect the government to assist the new analogue terrestrial entrants, we anticipate that both will struggle to become profitable. Meanwhile, the DTT space will be more interesting for the takeover opportunities that it presents to the leading terrestrial commercial groups.

Fastweb’s high service model increasingly appeals to the business segment but aggressive competition on the residential segment is eroding ARPU 

Mobile video services (along with music) have been heralded as the ‘killer applications’ set to deliver the revenue and customer satisfaction long promised by 3G. In our report Mobile TV: Trials and Tribulations [2005-20] we addressed live TV services; in this report we now consider non-live video downloading services. We conclude that while this is currently the largest ‘media’ mobile service (excluding ringtones) and it may continue to grow strongly in the short term, the market opportunity is ultimately limited due to the small size of video files downloadable over 3G, and that live TV and PC-based downloads will eventually force the market into decline.

The cause of subscription take-up already falling behind management targets set in mid 2005 is the CanalSat DTH basic rather than the Canal+ premium service, now under pressure from rival DSL and DTT services 

The Personal Video Recorder (PVR) will play a central role in contesting the digital TV landscape in the UK over the course of digital switchover and broadband expansion. BSkyB’s market leader Sky+ will be present in over 60% of its Sky Digital homes as the central media storage unit and intelligence hub.

The product, however, has a massive cost to Orange’s economics, and we cannot see how lowering churn or offering extra services can possibly compensate for this – the strategy appears to be driven by French rather than English economics 

NTL’s acquisition of Virgin Mobile will improve NTL’s prospects for revenue growth and enable it to exploit the Virgin brand and marketing expertise