Karen Egan, senior telecoms analyst at Enders Analysis, said the telecoms industry is "a very tough place" right now.

"Virgin Media O2 are particularly likely to be cutting jobs as they're still going through the integration process, but it's tough for all these companies right now," she said.

"Revenues aren't really growing, but costs certainly are... because they're having to upgrade to 5G and to fibre and all of that requires investment. Those costs can't be avoided."

“When you look at the sector, the profitability is struggling in [the] face of escalating costs and revenues that aren’t growing,” said Karen Egan, an analyst at Enders Analysis, adding that operators were required to pour millions of money into building networks while sustaining and upgrading them into fibre and 5G. “Who is not cutting costs in telecoms?”

Douglas McCabe at Enders said: “This momentum will help leverage its valuation, though multiple bidders will always be the critical ingredient.”

Analysts at Enders added that potential buyers included UK and non-UK media groups, private equity investors, wealthy UK individuals interested in acquiring a “trophy” asset close to the Conservative party, or non-UK individuals.

“It’s obviously bad because it throws into doubt the reliability of the organisation and the governance,” says François Godard, an analyst at Enders Analysis.

“It has the immediate effect of forcing the company to scrutinise everything. You stop all your dealings, you stop all new contracts, you look at existing contracts and you have to run checks on all supply agreements.”

Godard adds: “Even if in a few months’ time we see that it was limited to one person and a few suppliers, in the meantime the whole business has been disrupted.”

Francois Godard of Enders Analysis underlined the importance for payment platforms to “ know their customers. It is necessary that this simple diktat be followed by payment companies, understood as credit card companies. They shift the responsibility to the banks that have direct contact with consumers and potential pirates. And yet -he highlighted- the same is not applied for example in the porn industry, where controls are carried out: there is a different awareness of illegal industries in some countries."

Douglas McCabe, media analyst at Enders, said the growth of social media as a dominant news source raised questions over trust and reliability of information.

“The hierarchy and curation of discoverable content are not designed by news and information media, but by different criteria,” he said. “This reduces the influence and impact of news brands that invest in expensive journalism, with obvious implications for the economics of media and democracy itself.”

Gareth Sutcliffe, analyst at Enders Analysis, said that such a deal would be “really clunky” for consumers but “might be a way around the CMA”. “Microsoft will be running the numbers for a UK carve-out that will please the CMA,” he said. “They would be looking at least-worst options.”