BT’s Q1 results provided welcome respite from a string of bad news, and some evidence of management’s ability to cut costs, but were helped by a temporary sharp reduction in capex and a VAT repayment. It remains early days

The ‘21st century’ upgrade to the core network now appears to be largely complete and delivering cost savings, but a separate voice network will continue to run over the access infrastructure

The company’s project to deploy more fibre beyond the local exchange, whilst a useful defensive move, looks unlikely to have a major impact on shareholder value

The BBC Executive has fleshed out many details of Project Canvas in response to questions raised by the BBC Trust: Canvas being the proposed joint venture between the BBC, BT, ITV and Five that aims to solve the challenge of realising the seamless convergence of linear broadcast TV and internet video to the TV screen in the living room

For Project Canvas to succeed, it is likely, in spite of its merits, to have to address competition concerns in the areas of company structure, stifling innovation and editorial controls over who gets to participate

Stifling innovation – whether to do with creative restrictions, marginalisation of competing players or undue prominence given to the traditional public service broadcasting (PSB) model – appears the most problematic issue facing Project Canvas, whose success will depend on its ability to convince the rest of the industry that it is stimulating, not stifling innovation

Vodafone’s European revenue growth continued to slide, down to -4.4% in the June quarter from -3.3% last quarter, which itself was a sharp drop

A substantial element of this quarter’s decline was driven by an acceleration in termination rate cuts in Germany, but the general trend is weak volumes driven by a weak economy

With a substantial termination rate cut in the UK taken from 1st July, we expect growth to decline again in the September quarter, before stabilising/improving for the rest of the year

The distribution business experienced modest growth in connections and revenue, easily outpacing European market handset growth of -15%, as the company continues to build market share

At TalkTalk Group (TTG) net broadband additions for the quarter were relatively strong, given likely market growth, probably due at least in part to reduced subscriber loss at AOL UK

In our view cut-price business broadband, rather than IPTV, offers the best prospect of profitable revenue growth in fixed line

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

This report sets out our views about current trends and the longer term potential of Video on Demand (VOD) services in a world of converged TV and PC applications

Contrary to views expressed in the Digital Britain Final Report, we think that the non-linear on demand world will develop very slowly, with VOD applications unlikely to achieve more than 5% share of total TV viewing in ten years‟ time

We project that VOD use will achieve 2% of total TV viewing by 2013, some £300 million in total pay revenues and a little over £100 million in spot advertising revenues

This report contains the 2009 edition of our annual review of UK mobile user trends, based on a survey of 1,000 adults

We look at handset ownership, replacement trends, handset manufacturer choice, network operator choice, 3G handset ownership, usage of existing services such as photo-messaging and the mobile internet and, finally, interest in new services such as mobile TV, datacardsand femtocells

Vodafone (and others) are reported to be interested in acquiring T-Mobile in the UK, but any such merger would be likely to face significant barriers from regulatory authorities

This achievement would be moderated by ‘integration leakage’, i.e. increased churn caused by customers leaving who were initially attracted by an aspect of one of the operators that disappears after integration, but the net result should still be positive for the JV

The remaining UK operators will benefit both from this churn and the reduction in competitive intensity associated with five players dropping to four. While all the operators may win, UK consumers might lose, with regulatory clearance thus still far from certain

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