Digital terrestrial TV (DTT) launched in France on 31st March. We expect significant enthusiasm for the wider channel choice available to the 15 million French homes (62%) served only by analogue terrestrial feeds and the roughly 40% of homes that cannot receive a satellite feed. 14 channels were launched on a free-to-air (FTA) basis, and low prices of entry-level STBs have led to brisk sales.

As unbundlers in France increasingly look to migrate their customers from shared to full access – principally to sever the underlying telephony customer relationship with the incumbent and reduce churn – Fastweb in Italy has decided to go in the opposite direction.

In January this year, Ofcom published its eagerly-awaited consultation document, “Spectrum Framework Review: Implementation Plan”, containing its plans for the release of new mobile spectrum and the liberalisation of existing mobile spectrum. This report reviews the implications of Ofcom's hesitant moves towards spectrum liberalisation and the vast amount of new mobile spectrum that will be released onto the market.

We find that the hype is overblown, with low underlying consumer interest and the potential for a mass market service still several years away due to 3G actually being an inappropriate delivery mechanism.

Handset manufacturers are likely to be the only significant winners from mobile TV, able to keep top-end handset prices high with yet another seldom-used feature.

Analogue switch-off is of huge significance to audience share and thus advertising revenue of the existing terrestrial broadcasters (see Analogue Switch-Off [2004-26]). When switch-off occurs, ITV’s audience share will fall, thus affecting revenue from advertising, but its financial impact will be balanced to some extent by an end to ITV’s analogue licence fee payments (see ITV Licence Fees [2004-29]). Where do matters currently stand?

Carrier Pre-Selection (CPS) providers such as One.Tel and Carphone Warehouse are adding thousands of customers for fixed-line voice calls every week. BT has improved its competitive positioning in the course of 2004, but many service providers are still able to provide a discount to BT. As a result, BT lost almost 7% of UK geographic call minutes in the past year.

Our first report of 2005 deals with prospects for music download services to the PC and the mobile handset.

Our last report of the year 2004 covers device and network convergence – a recently resurgent growth story for media, telecommunications and consumer electronics companies. But does it represent any more of a reality, threat or opportunity than before?

H3G has made great strides this year, but these have mainly been in terms of reported subscribers and market perception rather than in fundamental terms. In this report we examine in depth both its global business model and the all-important funding available in order to assess the likely future for the business, and its subsequent impact on the GSM operators.

France's Ligue de football professionnel (LFP) will reveal the outcome of its first assessment of bids for broadcast rights to 380 first division football events and highlights for the seasons 2005-2008 on this coming 10th of December. The 2004 auction picks up the thread of the 2002 auction, 'won' by Canal+ by offering an exclusivity premium, but whose outcome was annulled following a complaint by rival TPS. Broadcast rights, first split between Canal+ and TPS in 1999, have simply been carried over.

The experience in France of local loop unbundling (LLU) could be indicative of LLU in the UK. About 20% of France's 6 million DSL connections will be unbundled by Q4 2004 (just 4.5% of all lines), and the LLU share of DSL connections could climb to 50% by the end of 2006.