The Digital Britain report’s proposed fixed line levy to fund rural NGA may well never become law, but if implemented, could end up being absorbed by the service providers, with a disproportionately negative impact on TalkTalk Group

The proposed Universal Service Commitment for broadband at 2 Mbit/s looks of limited attraction to potential bidders, but could increase the addressable market for retail broadband by about one million households

The proposed spectrum solution is a sensible compromise which ensures a roughly even playing field between mobile operators over the longer term. There is however still some way to go to implement it, with mid-2010 the best case timetable for the main auction of new spectrum, with this continued delay benefitting the incumbent mobile operators

Under recession-induced financial stress, rival Spanish media groups Prisa and Mediapro have settled a three year battle over football rights, giving Digital+ secure access to domestic football for three seasons

A separate tentative deal to merge their TV assets still faces considerable hurdles if it is to be finalised by the end of June. Prisa needs to raise cash and may still dispose of Digital+ or bring new investors in the merged entity

Although Digital+ is unrivalled on the premium segment of the pay market, we doubt the economic gloom, plus strong competition from IPTV, cable and terrestrial TV, leaves much room for subscriber expansion

Ofcom’s recent statement on LLU pricing has increased the amount which BT Openreach can charge unbundlers for full LLU over the next two years by about 8% overall

We estimate the changes will raise BT group EBITDA by less than 1% over the two years to March 2011

TalkTalk Group’s recent retail price increase is more than enough to offset the impact of Ofcom’s ruling on its annual EBITDA to March 2010, but the ruling could still take 5% off annual EBITDA to March 2011

Sky has yet to start mass migration to MPF and is more exposed to increases in the price of ancillary services, but less exposed to those for MPF rental. Sky’s annual residential telecoms EBITDA to March 2011 could be 10% lower, but this could be reduced if management takes the opportunity to increase the price of retail line rental

Carphone Warehouse’s distribution business had a slightly mixed year, with strong volumes and revenue mitigated by a sharp drop in margins and profit, with margin being sacrificed for market share

Given the very poor recession-hit market for handsets, Carphone Warehouse’s market share gains have been dramatic, so the sacrifice was at least not in vain

Although TalkTalk Group missed much of its guidance to March 2009, we now view new guidance as achievable, with the main risks related to the integration of Tiscali UK

According to press reports, Sky has lodged a bid of about £160 million for the VMtv content arm of Virgin Media (VMed), estimated to be 50-60% higher than other offers in the latest and final round of the bidding contest

At TalkTalk Group (TTG) net broadband additions for the quarter were relatively strong, given likely market growth, probably due at least in part to reduced subscriber loss at AOL UK

In our view cut-price business broadband, rather than IPTV, offers the best prospect of profitable revenue growth in fixed line

In the following presentation we show our analysis of revenue growth trends for mobile operators in the top five European markets (UK, Germany, France, Italy and Spain)

The historical analysis is based on the published results of the operators, although they include our estimates where their data is inconsistent or not complete. A copy of the underlying data in spreadsheet format is available to our subscription clients on request

Steep declines in CD sales in major recorded music markets continued in 2009 as we had forecast last year (Recorded Music and Music Publishing [2008-39])

Sales of recorded music continue to be decimated by physical and online piracy, plus the disintermediation of the album purchase by the digital purchase of ‘cherry-picked’ tracks

A further knock-on effect on CD sales is the reduction in retailers’ shelf space devoted to music, including as a result of the bankruptcies of major chains (Circuit City, Woolworths and Zavvi) – what we have called the ‘perfect storm’ for the CD

Against current annual losses in the order of £100 million, Setanta has the whole of June in which to attract the necessary investment that will allow it to continue. The alternative is closure

As complementary supplier of premium sports channels to Sky, Setanta has been more vulnerable to recessionary pressures, but it is not in the interest of any of its existing competitors/business associates for it to cease operations

There is a chance of survival, but it requires swapping the current retail/wholesale model for a wholesale only model as a start, with the possibility of further reductions in the costs of its sports rights

The OFT has delivered its verdict on ITV’s request for a review and modification of the CRR remedy that the Competition Commission imposed as a condition of the Carlton/Granada merger in 2003

In delivering its verdict, the OFT has chosen to sit on the fence. After recognising both the merits of the ITV case and the continuing concerns of the advertising community it reiterated earlier recommendations for minor changes in keeping with the times, but otherwise left it to the CC to decide what changes to make

The complexity of the CRR remedy and the polarised views of parties involved, as well as the burden of decision-making transferred to the CC, merely confirm the view that any significant modification to CRR will be a long time in coming, and almost certainly long after the start of the 2010 trading season, as previously suggested by ITV

Newspaper publishers are about to enter a series of ‘online payment’ trials to help bolster disappointing online advertising performance that alone will be unable to support full scale newsrooms

Publishers are on the back foot, however: they have been giving away their content for free for almost a decade, and their core content does not have the unequivocal unique attributes of a football match, a movie or a pop song

While there are a variety of options for management to explore, in aggregate they will never match the print model, and so news is destined to shrink as a commercial enterprise for newspaper publishers