Under regulatory pressure, France Télécom introduced in July 2006 a wholesale ‘naked’ DSL offer, under which broadband alone is supplied to the customer, as the lower frequency portion of the line used for PSTN telephony is deactivated

Fiscal Q1 2007 results show unexpectedly strong subscriber gross additions (14% up on Q1 2006) and a promising start to Sky Broadband in its pursuit of at least 3 million subscribers by December 2010. Management attributes the strong gross subscriber additions to the ‘halo’ effect of its broadband and telephony offer

Growth will likely slow from 2006's impressive levels, but the business is still a very solid core, with volumes, prices and commission levels likely to hold up well for the foreseeable future

As regards TalkTalk, the rate of customer migration onto fully unbundled lines continues to be an issue, but the situation is improving, albeit gradually

The appeal of the ‘free’ offer appears to have survived the serious customer service issues of 2006, but the new marketing campaign will need to boost subscriber growth significantly for it to remain on-track

Under mounting competitive pressure from Sky, NTL needs to reinforce its position in content and has approached ITV about a possible combination

True to pre-launch speculation, BSkyB has entered broadband with a price-cutting bang that will have sent tremors round the rest of the industry.

Orange’s new ‘free broadband’ offer brings savings of up to 60% for Orange UK customers who pay for broadband, and may appeal to a great many of them 

The FAPL has just auctioned six packages of televised live Premier League (PL) rights, each comprising 23 games, for the three years commencing autumn 2008. The total consideration of £1,714 million is 67% up on the £1,024 million BSkyB is now paying over three years for the same number of live PL games 

Barça cannot afford to dispense with Sogecable’s support as a pay-TV partner and possessor of contracts with the other leading clubs. A deal has to be struck 

BSkyB’s quarterly results will be delivered on Friday 14th November. Prior to these new figures, this report gives our views on the attainability of BSkyB’s medium term targets.

Wanadoo just reported its H1 2003 results and the FY 2003 Group EBITDA target looks well in hand thanks to the outstanding performance of the directories division. The performance of the Internet segment has been less satisfactory for two reasons: Wanadoo France is facing stiff competition from Free on the 512k DSL segment; and Freeserve in the UK and Eresmas in Spain have seen very slow subscriber and revenue growth due to barebones customer acquisition activity. Wanadoo will be ramping up DSL customer acquisition activity from September onwards to achieve Internet segment targets and may reduce prices in the UK.

Wanadoo reached an important milestone in 2002, reporting its first (very small) positive EBITDA margin on its French Internet business, thanks to broadband-related revenue increases and lower narrowband and broadband access costs. In contrast, losses widened at Wanadoo's Internet properties outside France, in particular Freeserve in the UK and Eresmas is Spain, but these were more than fully offset by profits on the Directories segment. This note looks ahead to 2003, when Wanadoo expects to reach positive EBITDA on the Internet segment as a whole, thanks to continued improvement in France and tightly contained losses at Freeserve and Eresmas.