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

Using a little understood provision of the merger rules, the government has asked Ofcom to take a look at the Sky stake in ITV, just in case the OFT did not come up with the right answer the first time round. As a result of the intervention, Ofcom will decide whether the share purchase reduced the number of separately managed broadcasters in the UK. Since this is almost exactly what the OFT is already doing, it is impossible to see how Ofcom could reach a different conclusion to the OFT. In this sense, the intervention has little point

Hostilities between Sky and Virgin have intensified during the course of cable’s re-launch, Sky’s announcement of its pay-DTT plans, and bilateral negotiations over channel carriage fee payments on the satellite and cable platforms

Strong second quarter subscriber figures, including 432,000 gross additions, the highest in six years, attest to a strong and improving product offer. To reach the core target of 10 million subscribers by 2010 will, however, require poaching many cable customers

Three sources of downside risk for Trader Media include: a sluggish car market impacting on print and online ad volumes; the decline of print ad volumes as a result of the shift to online and resulting compression of Trader’s operating margins; Trader’s powerful competitors in the online ad market, especially eBay

Trader’s valuation could be 10 to 11 times 2006 profit of £120 million, although a minority stake makes it difficult for a private equity investor to get in, slash the expensive print-based cost structure, and get out quickly

H3G has removed roaming charges for customers roaming onto its own overseas networks. While reducing roaming prices can be partially, or even fully, compensated for by elasticity effects, removing them altogether has far more limited direct compensations, especially when consumers are on bundle tariffs

H3G’s X-Series is not quite as innovative as it was presented to be, given that T-Mobile’s Web ‘n’ Walk is very similar in concept (flat rate data tariffs, 3rd party Internet services) and has been available since June 2005

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

H3G has extended its deadline for hitting EBITDA breakeven, with this now around 12 months later than its previous forecast, we believe due to management failing to understand the extent of its churn problem 

The Zune Marketplace is no match for the iTunes Store, with a smaller repertory of music and no video to supply the Zune, since Microsoft has announced it will soon sell video for the top-end Xbox 360, around which its ‘home-entertainment’ strategy is based

We figure the costs of switching to the Zune are low, but Microsoft will be lucky to sell 1 million Zunes in the Christmas quarter – if it does, revenue will rise by less than 1%, so the Zune is of limited interest, whether successful or not

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.