Annual market growth is dropping in line with our predictions over the past two years, despite some significant quarterly blips.We continue to project growth in 2009 to be significant, but much lower than in the past, with net additions of 1 million

We expect annual net additions in 2010 to drop by another 20% to 800,000 as the market becomes ever more saturated

We project 19.8 million broadband households by 2014 and have slightly increased our projections from 2010 to take into account the likely impact of higher growth in the number of households as recently predicted by the Office for National Statistics (ONS)

This report on the French broadband market examines growth trends in 2009 and forecasts to 2012, updates our previous assessments of the commercial significance of IPTV in the triple play (a bundle of broadband, telephony and TV), and details the state of fibre-to-the-home (FTTH) deployment

Shrugging off the recession (milder and shorter than in the UK), the French broadband market is set to reach 19.6 million connections by the end of 2009, up 1.9 million on 2008 – only 12% less than the level of net adds of 2008. With 2009 better than we expected, we now anticipate a sharper slowdown in net adds in 2010, with 1.4 million net adds projected. We still expect the total to reach 22.8 million connections by 2012 (70% household penetration)

VMed’s Q3 results were strong, with the impact of the May price increases feeding through almost directly into growth in revenue and cash flow. Cable volume performance was solid, given difficult market conditions and the focus on higher value customers

VMed’s plans for HD are becoming increasingly important. In this regard, the outcome of Ofcom’s pay-TV investigation could prove crucial

The cost reduction programme is delivering ahead of expectations, and we remain optimistic that revenue growth will continue, in combination with reductions in operating costs, to generate further significant growth in cash flow

T-Mobile and Orange’s plan to merge their UK businesses into a JV would create the UK’s largest mobile operator by some margin, and the enormous planned synergies of £545m per annum are actually quite unaggressive given the cost overlap

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

This report looks at the UK broadband and telephony market up to Q2 2009. The key trend is that the steep reduction in UK broadband net additions continued in Q2 2009, to 176,100

VMed’s Q2 results were again mixed but, on balance, encouraging, with the impact of the May price increases feeding through into revenue growth

Cable volume performance was poor but, with the exception of broadband, no worse than expected, and is not expected to deteriorate further relative to the market

We remain optimistic that management will succeed in combining revenue growth with reductions in operating costs to generate sustained growth in cash flow from autumn 2009

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

According to press reports, Sky has lodged a bid of about £160 million for the VMtv content arm of Virgin Media (VMed), estimated to be 50-60% higher than other offers in the latest and final round of the bidding contest

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

VMed’s Q1 results were again mixed, with declining group revenue and OCF margin but improving performance at Virgin Mobile and continuing strength in TV

The core cable business is facing a return to negative customer growth due to a combination of seasonality and stalling demand for broadband

But de facto price increases in broadband, TV and mobile should boost financial performance from the autumn; we expect this to be combined with reduced opex to generate significant cash flow growth from 2010