Sky and TalkTalk are rolling out fibre in a small part of York, using a model that they could potentially extend to cover 10-15% of UK households

The economics of greenfield fibre build are still terrible in general, with even building in cherry-picked areas very hard to justify under current conditions, although the economics will improve over time as demand for speed increases

Moreover, once it is built it is built, and BT loses the wholesale revenue forever. Taking the hint and offering more reasonable wholesale fibre pricing may not be a bad option if Sky and TalkTalk persist

Amazon has entered the increasingly crowded digital entertainment TV device marketplace, one which could be strategically more important for the ecommerce giant than tech rivals Apple and Google

The frictionless integration of entertainment and ecommerce on TV represents a bigger consumer milestone than competitor services are offering, and Amazon’s brand has huge appeal, though at present it has less market traction for streaming than it does for other products

Content owners and broadcasters remain the real TV gatekeepers, with integration of TV and digital a service-level pipe dream for now, and so Amazon will likely have to accept being one of many, rather than the runaway winner as it is in books

European mobile service revenue growth again disappointed in Q4, dropping slightly from -8.9% to -9.1%, with underlying revenue growth dropping a little further from -6.0% to -6.3%, again reaching a record low

There had been hopes that improved GDP growth would drive a volume rebound, that price declines would start to annualise out, and that declining out-of-bundle usage would wane in its impact as this usage declined. In the event, ongoing price competition from smaller operators, MVNOs and quad play offerings, combined with surging use of OTT communications platforms, have dominated trends

In the medium term, the development of 4G and Vodafone’s Project Spring may bring some much needed network differentiation back to the market, allowing pricing power to return to the larger operators. However, it will be 2015-2016 before these factors come into play: in the short term, the main source of optimism is consolidation

Enders Analysis co-hosted its annual conference, in conjunction with BNP Paribas and Deloitte, in London on 4 March 2014. The event featured talks by 13 of the most influential figures in media and telecoms, and was chaired by Sir Peter Bazalgette.

This report provides edited transcripts of the talks given by seven of those speakers: James Purnell, BBC; Dido Harding, TalkTalk; Nicola Mendelsohn, Facebook; John Paton, Digital First Media; Mike Darcey, News UK; Ashley Highfield, Johnston Press; Michael Comish, Tesco

The UK residential communications sector maintained strong revenue growth of 5% in Q4 on a reported basis, or 4% underlying, bolstered by strong volumes and solid pricing, with recent price increase implementations supporting the latter going forward

It is still hard to see a very significant competitive impact from BT Sport, with BT’s broadband net adds up by only 20k-30k on a year earlier, but the impact on costs is very clear, with increased sports rights costs, increased marketing costs and pay TV box/device subsidies driving up the cost base of all operators

Looking forward, in the short term market volumes are likely to be suppressed by recent bad weather lengthening provisioning times, and the detailed timings of price increases will suppress ARPU growth. In the medium term the outlook is much stronger, although the prospect of increased competitive activity around the next Premier League rights auction still casts a shadow

The Court of Appeal has judged that the Competition Appeal Tribunal erred in law in its rejection of the Ofcom Wholesale Must Offer remedy for premium sports by failing to deal adequately with all of Ofcom’s competition concerns but agreed with the Competition Appeal Tribunal that Ofcom had acted within its regulatory powers Sky’s appeal against the 2010 Ofcom decision will therefore be re-heard at the Competition Appeal Tribunal and we believe the likelihood is that the Wholesale Must Offer remedy will be approved, while the jurisdiction issue may yet have some life if Sky takes its appeal to the Supreme Court The seven year old pay-TV saga is far from over as major changes have occurred in the last four years. Irrespective of the progress of the Competition Appeal Tribunal review, we think it will have little bearing on the outcome of the Premier League auction in light of the strategic objectives of Sky and BT

TalkTalk enjoyed a healthy December quarter, with broadband net adds steady, TV net adds accelerating, churn falling and revenue growth accelerating to 5%

Revenue growth was boosted by a big wholesale contract win and the timing of line rental price increases, but the company did achieve a complex price restructuring with no negative ARPU impact

With churn heading down again, the company appears to have successfully weathered the BT Sport-related storm, leaving it on track to achieve its aims

Explosive growth in take-up of smartphones and tablets means that the effective size of the internet will increase by several multiples within the next few years. This transformation in scale comes with a major change in character and operating dynamics, creating new opportunities and revenue streams.

Twitter is unique amongst social apps: it gives new users a blank canvas in which they can (and must) create their own social network reflecting their own interests, hence building an ‘Interest Graph’, but onboarding new users remains a challenge.

Revenue at Twitter is now on a $600 million annual run-rate, scaling rapidly since the introduction of ‘native ads’, and seems set for further growth: the key question is whether it can achieve breakout user growth and mass market scale.