BT had a reasonable quarter in its consumer broadband business given market pressures, and a very strong one at EE with continued growth acceleration. It had a good quarter for fibre adoption as well, helping its wholesale divisions stabilise their revenue, but business/IT was weak as expected

Regulatory pressure remains intense despite the (welcome) Openreach agreement, with price cap regulation proposed or due on a range of products, and a regulatory approach which is far from investment-orientated

Pressures in the business/IT market are likely to continue, and pressures in the consumer broadband market are likely to intensify, justifying BT’s current cautious approach to guidance and dividends

After a US debut, Amazon’s marketplace of SVOD services arrives in the UK and Germany, but without the major draws of HBO and Showtime

Unbundling SVOD for premium content strengthens Amazon’s position in the fast-developing connected TV landscape, where Prime Video is taking on Netflix, NOW TV and YouTube

For niche content providers, Amazon Channels provides a new, low-friction route to go direct-to-consumer with a mix of live and on-demand premium content alongside existing distribution strategies

Our latest forecasts point to the continued strength of DTT within the UK broadcast market. We predict DTT-only homes will account for 42% of TV viewing ten years from now, up from 38% today.

Much of this is due to the UK’s ageing population profile, since DTT skews older. The number of over-45s in DTTonly homes is set to increase by 13% by 2026.

The other key factor is the continued growth of flexible pay-lite services—for example, Netflix and NOW TV— which are of greater appeal to younger audiences.

UK mobile service revenue growth was -0.1% in Q4, a 0.6ppt improvement from the previous quarter. This was helped by some modest price firming, continued strong data growth, and some inflation in handset prices

EE was the strongest growing operator after being the weakest just 12 months ago, with its efforts to improve customer service, network performance and perceptions of network performance starting to pay off. H3G had a strong H2, with strong customer additions while not sacrificing ARPU, although it is still clearly taking steps to manage capacity demand. O2 had another solid performance with a modest improvement in service revenue growth, and Vodafone suffered from weak ARPU primarily due to pricing pressure in the business market

The outlook for market service revenue growth is fairly positive, with ARPU-enhancing pricing moves in evidence, supported by continuing strong data volume growth, and existing customer price increases due to take effect from Q2 2017

Vodafone Europe’s mobile service revenue growth worsened to -0.6% from -0.2% in the previous quarter, the first deterioration following at least nine quarters of consecutive improvement, with the UK particularly weak

The company could nonetheless grow profits handsomely if revenue growth stabilises at this level, with more clarity on the medium term prospects for this likely to come with next quarter’s results and guidance for 2017/18

Our main concern continues to be the company’s declining subscriber share, particularly in consolidating markets where its historic advantages of having high market share may be rapidly eroded

Streaming is now mainstream and we predict 113% growth in expenditure on subscriptions for 2015-18 in the top four markets (US, UK, Germany and France)

Free vs paid-for streaming is the central question for the music ecosystem: free yields fractions of pennies, making subscription the only credible business model

Market leader Spotify is facing competition from tech giants Amazon, Apple and Google, with deep pockets, for whom content is a pawn in a larger game

In the UK, traditional broadcast television's future appears threatened, as technological developments increasingly allow people to access video content on demand, whether on TV sets or other screens, or from traditional broadcasters or online services.

This report examines the extent to which timeshift viewing, by which we mean personal video recorder (PVR) playback and viewing to catch-up services, has bolstered linear TV.

The linear schedule is still very relevant for both consumers and advertisers, maintaining television’s status as an effective mass medium for building brands.