On 3 June 2025, Enders Analysis co-hosted the annual Media and Telecoms 2025 & Beyond Conference with Deloitte, sponsored by Adobe, Barclays, Salesforce, Financial Times and SAS.

With over 700 attendees and more than 50 speakers from the TMT sector, including leading executives and industry experts, the conference focused on how new technologies, regulation, and infrastructure will impact the future of the industry.

This is the edited transcript of Session Three, covering: Vodafone’s strategy; BT’s strategy; the future of fibre; and challenges and opportunities for telcos.

Most regulations within the TAR26 condoc were continuations of the previous pro-investment regulations, albeit with little progress made on copper withdrawal, no extra help for the struggling altnets and a number of unexpected twists at the margin. 

Within the detail, the most significant hit is the return of cost-based price controls to some leased line charges, and across all of the proposed changes, Openreach has on balance fared worse than retail ISPs, albeit at a scale that is manageable within the BT Group.

Ofcom showed no inclination to offer any extra help to the struggling altnet industry, regarding its inefficiencies as being its own (and its investors’) problem, with consolidation the only sensible path forward for most.

Podcast reach and share continue to grow, albeit slowly, aided by need-state differentiation and increasingly online, on-demand media habits.

The ad market remains small with the long tail of podcasts difficult to monetise, but an industry move into video—on both YouTube and Spotify—offers substantial reach and monetisation opportunities.

Publishers and broadcasters see podcasts as an essential brand extension enabling greater reach, whilst successful podcast networks have tapped into more relaxed, commercial formats.

Poverty has a negative impact on health in many ways —such as through housing, work, food, tobacco use, healthcare and sanitary costs, relationships, and social life—while social inequality has been shown to have its own, independent impact.

One in five people in the UK live in poverty, including nearly one in three children; almost two million households experience destitution. The life expectancy gap at birth between the most and least deprived areas of England is 9.7 years for men and 7.9 for women; the gaps are larger still in Scotland.

Multibank, an anti-poverty, community-based charitable initiative—which gifts otherwise wasted essentials to those most in need—has the invaluable support of retail and media to realise its impact.

The proposal from DCMS to expand the pre-digital “public interest” regime that requires clearance for changes in the equity stakes in print newspapers to online news publishers lacks a firm rationale in 2024.

A plethora of online sources dilute the influence of news brands and their proprietors over British people’s political views, in particular the platforms (X, YouTube, TikTok and Facebook) hosting self-publishing influencers, politicians and political advertising.

The UK's expanded future regime, if enacted, will further chill the appetite of investors for stakes in commercial media, reduce their value and ability to raise capital, and stifle beneficial consolidation.
 

UK news publishers are experimenting with generative AI to realise newsroom efficiencies. Different businesses see a different balance of risk and reward: some eager locals are already using it for newsgathering and content creation, while quality nationals hold back from reader-facing uses.

Publishers must protect the integrity of their content. Beyond hallucinations, overuse of generative AI carries the longer-term commercial and reputational risk of losing what makes a news product distinctive.

Far less certain is the role of generative AI in delivering the holy grail of higher revenues. New product offerings could be more of an opportunity for businesses that rely on subscribers than those that are ad-supported.

Broadcasters are accelerating their transformation into digital-first businesses. We estimate that 17% of broadcasters' viewing on the TV set will have been delivered by IP this year.

FTA platforms have a more complex migration pathway to IP than pay-TV. Given the existing strength of DTT, and its older demographic profile, DTT will account for more broadcaster viewing hours than satellite/cable combined by 2029.

By 2040, we estimate that half of all broadcaster viewing will be via IP, with broadcast delivery remaining strong due to the live schedule.

On 4 June 2024, Enders Analysis co-hosted the annual Media and Telecoms 2024 & Beyond Conference with Deloitte, sponsored by Barclays, Financial Times, Salesforce and Adobe. 

With over 580 attendees and over 40 speakers from the TMT sector, including leading executives, policy leaders, and industry experts, the conference focused on how new technologies, regulation and infrastructure will impact the future of the industry. 

This is the edited transcript of Session Three, covering: consolidation in the telecoms sector; fixed-mobile convergence; and the future of the fibre industry. Videos of the presentations are available on the conference website.

This report is free to access

The UK charity sector’s role in sustaining the fabric of communities is increasingly important as poverty spreads during the worst cost-of living crisis since the 1970s, at the same time as donations are weaker and costs are rising.

Media play a crucial role in raising the awareness, engagement and donations to charities by individuals, the bedrock of income. Selected case studies of TV, radio and the press show how charities leverage their unique qualities to engage audiences across the UK.

We highlight Gordon Brown’s landmark anti-poverty community-based Multibank initiative, which gifts essentials to those most in need, and has vital support from Sky, the Financial Times and News UK.

IFPI reports trade revenues from streaming rose 10% in 2023 to reach $19.3 billion, and we estimate Spotify contributed about $7 billion. Spotify also rewarded music publishers with about $2 billion in royalties. 

Spotify’s Loud & Clear data on royalties paid to the 225,000 professional and aspiring artists served to its 600 million users reveals a bulge in the middle part of the distribution in favour of Spanish language artists as the service expands in Latin America.

The top 1,000 earners are mainly artists at the top of the charts in the US and UK markets, which together contribute half of Spotify’s revenues and thus royalties. Top earner and top all-time streamed artist Taylor Swift earned over $100 million in 2023.