To draw in competitors to Canal+, French football Ligue 1 broadcasting rights are being tendered in 12 lots, offered in three sequential auctions (non-premium Fans matches, Premium, highlights)
After two quarters that have fallen short of earlier guidance, TF1 Q3 results have at last met more subdued investor expectations of marginal growth in flagship TF1 channel advertising revenues in a total market expected to increase by about 4.5% in 2007, chiefly due to digital growth
Vodafone’s European revenue growth has dropped again in the latest quarter, both relative to the prior quarter and its competitors, with Spain performing particularly poorly
Ofcom is proposing taking back and re-auctioning over 30% of Vodafone and O2’s 2G spectrum as part of more general plans for ‘refarming’ 2G spectrum to allow its use for 3G services
Vodafone’s European operations revenue growth dropped, but not as much as various regulatory interventions would have warranted, implying a strong operational performance
Vodafone achieved its 2006/07 full year targets on revenue and profitability, with solid revenue growth (underlying about 2% in Europe) but dropping margins (by around 2pps in Europe)
Growth in Q1 2007 for the aggregate non-Vodafone European mobile operations was 4.2%, a slight decline from 4.7% last quarter (Vodafone reports its results next week)
The new consumer data tariffs from Vodafone and Orange in the UK continue the trend towards dramatically lower data prices for high end users, although they are cunningly structured to involve more moderate increases for low end users
Canal+ targeted subscription (as opposed to subscriber) growth of 1.3 million by 2010 has a lot of stretch in view of the intense competition from free-to-air (FTA) services and in particular digital terrestrial TV
Vodafone and Orange are planning to share their 3G networks in the UK, and are looking at potentially sharing their 2G networks in due course