AI agents capable of complex, self-directed tasks are becoming a reality, with capabilities set to improve dramatically through this year, and diffuse widely.

Consumer agent uptake will be hard to time, but fast when it occurs. Enterprise adoption will happen slower but with greater inevitability, as agents offer strong productivity gains across many business functions.

TMT firms should be able to capitalise on much of these potential cost savings, but are exposed to a number of specific risks around agents acting as new digital middlemen, disintermediating traditional web ecosystems within advertising and ecommerce.

Podcast reach and share continue to grow, albeit slowly, aided by need-state differentiation and increasingly online, on-demand media habits.

The ad market remains small with the long tail of podcasts difficult to monetise, but an industry move into video—on both YouTube and Spotify—offers substantial reach and monetisation opportunities.

Publishers and broadcasters see podcasts as an essential brand extension enabling greater reach, whilst successful podcast networks have tapped into more relaxed, commercial formats.

Geopolitical clashes between the US and Europe were a barely concealed undercurrent at this year’s MWC, with European tech regulation at odds with US moves, and telcos pitching for regulatory favours on firmer ground than they have had for years.

Perhaps the largest impact is on the satellite industry, with Eutelsat OneWeb having been given a new lease of life as the EU champion versus a now disfavoured SpaceX/Starlink.

AI was of course the talk of the town, but largely in ways that are tangential at best to traditional telcos, with the necessary building blocks for telcos to play a big role (i.e. network APIs) still needing much work.

Despite the success and popularity of Amazon’s Echo, the rationale for this device in Amazon’s ecosystem has been unclear—until now.

The introduction of Alexa+ to Echo devices—enhanced with generative AI which improves its voice user-interface—aims to change this.

Alexa+ is designed to increase Prime lock-in, and enables Amazon to differentiate its devices and operating systems.

The ‘big 4’ ISPs’ combined revenue remained in decline in Q4 2024 at -0.4%, partly due to a BT accounting quirk but mainly due to altnets gaining share

ARPU growth of 2% is roughly compensating for subscriber declines of 2%, but this ARPU growth is likely to weaken in 2025 as various boosts drop out

A recovery will come as the altnets slow in H2 2025 (if not before) due to their restrained expansion, which cannot come soon enough for the big ISPs

US big tech companies are deploying hundreds of billions of dollars to remake the global economy in their image, as enviable growth contrasts with layoffs and low morale.

The cost of using AI models will fall in 2025 and make more AI applications possible. Regulation is caught between pressure from Trump and investigations that must go on, such as digital markets.

Microsoft and Google have tied their fortunes to AI. Amazon and Meta stand to realise business gains from AI, while Apple is the outlier: capex declined in 2024 as it focuses on iPhone and services.

CityFibre has reported positive EBITDA in 2024, albeit at a slim 4% margin, and still needs further scale—and to successfully onboard its new wholesale customer Sky—to drive decent investment returns.

CityFibre’s organic build rate is dropping sharply as it (sensibly) looks set to rely on consolidation to achieve the required scale, with its organic build focused on Project Gigabit areas.

CityFibre remains well-positioned for consolidation, but this may take some time yet, with the altnet sector set to slow organic progress anyway in the interim.

The mid-sized UK altnets Zzoomm and FullFibre have agreed to merge, in what looks like an all-share merger of (nearly) equals, both of whom have been struggling to raise finance.

Why did they pick each other rather than the larger CityFibre/Netomnia/nexfibre options? Valuation may have been the key factor, but it has left them still vulnerably low scale with further consolidation necessary.

Much more consolidation is required for the sector to be sustainable in our view, and further financial distress may be required for realistic valuations to emerge.

Use of publisher content to train AI models is hotly contested. Unacknowledged scraping, licensing deals, and lawsuits all characterise the publisher-AI company relationship.

However, model training is not the whole story. More and more products rely on up-to-date access to content, and some are direct competitors to publisher offerings.

Publishers can’t depend on copyright to deliver them the value of their IP. They need to track which products are catching on with users for licensing deals to make sense for them, and to ensure their own products keep up with the competition.

Starlink has unveiled its plans for its next-generation satellites, boasting dramatically more capacity than was anticipated, as it aims to bring gigabit speeds to its broadband users.

This rapid growth in capacity poses the risk of a more commercially aggressive Starlink. While this will amplify its impact on the broadband market, it remains a somewhat niche consumer proposition but with additional B2B appeal.

Amazon's Kuiper is gearing up to begin launching its own satellites. While its target of introducing service later this year is likely to slip, Kuiper will bring an important peer competitor to Starlink, and will be the first time that Amazon's retail and marketing heft enters the UK connectivity market.