Further consolidation could lie ahead for the UK commercial radio sector. EMAP is expected to offer its radio assets for sale and Scottish Media Group plans to divest Virgin Radio. The battleground is competition for listeners drawn by the BBC's increasingly popular national radio networks. This report however examines past consolidation, which produced substantial cost savings, without noticeably improving the commercial sector's fortunes. In our view, for consolidation to succeed in this regard, much greater attention will need to be paid to improving content

The loss of Sky basic channels, strong competition and a maturing broadband market have combined to weaken Virgin Media’s top line results sufficiently to cause cash flow to decline

Virgin Media has recently upped its mobile prices both within the ‘quad-play’ and on the Virgin Mobile standard prepay product

Vodafone’s European operations revenue growth dropped, but not as much as various regulatory interventions would have warranted, implying a strong operational performance

Vodafone achieved its 2006/07 full year targets on revenue and profitability, with solid revenue growth (underlying about 2% in Europe) but dropping margins (by around 2pps in Europe)

Growth in Q1 2007 for the aggregate non-Vodafone European mobile operations was 4.2%, a slight decline from 4.7% last quarter (Vodafone reports its results next week)

The new consumer data tariffs from Vodafone and Orange in the UK continue the trend towards dramatically lower data prices for high end users, although they are cunningly structured to involve more moderate increases for low end users

Virgin Media’s Q1 top line results were again mixed, with a growing number of customers leaving as competition intensifies, despite the rebrand to Virgin. But it could have been worse; most higher-spending customers are remaining

The spat between Virgin and Sky over cable carriage of Sky basic channels has generated much blogging, mostly supportive of Virgin, although neither party appears to be gaining from the ‘zero sum game’ dispute

Virgin Media’s Q4 results were again mixed – increasing competition is continuing to have a significant effect on net additions but, as yet, most higher ARPU customers are staying put, permitting modest revenue growth