Iliad is among the very few European altnets that have made unbundling a profitable business, despite France's highly contested market for broadband. This report examines Iliad's current positioning in this market, and the development of the media side of the triple play to grow ARPU and differentiate the brand

Vodafone is taking the first step in implementing its convergence strategy in the UK by buying broadband from BT Wholesale; while we believe the strategy is misguided, Vodafone’s approach is at least cautious 

The company is at least unlikely to be losing money on the product, and is perhaps just sensibly testing the water for positive consumer interest in a bundled package from Vodafone

We expect the water to be very cold - results from Orange, NTL and BT suggest continued very low consumer interest in fixed-mobile convergence, and we doubt that Vodafone will fare much better

Pipex’s acquisition of the Bulldog and Toucan customer bases establishes it as a significant player in the UK residential telecoms market 

Counterbalancing the good news, churn stood at a record high in recent years of 11.8%, while ARPU grew by only £3 compared with Q1 2006 after discounting exceptional factors and changes in accounting policies. Multiroom growth has also slackened

High churn and weak ARPU growth suggest a steady spin-down among Sky movie subs, placing even greater importance on the long term success of Sky Broadband in revitalising subscriber growth and building margins

In the attached slides, we examine the service revenue growth trends in the top five European mobile markets (UK, Germany, France, Italy and Spain) over the last six quarters (ending in the June 2006 quarter), focusing particularly on the latest trends. The analysis is based on the published results of the mobile operators, although we have had to make estimates where the operators have not reported recent figures (only Virgin Mobile), or their data is not complete or inconsistent. A copy of the underlying data in spreadsheet format is available to our subscription clients on request.

A merger would not be a panacea for either company and carries the risk of distracting them from more urgent issues, but closer collaboration, if well managed, could help both

Closer collaboration could help NTL address some of the issues of scale now facing Flextech and improve its ability to acquire premium content, whilst helping ITV to develop a more coherent new media strategy

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

The prospect of a merger between Scottish Media Group (SMG) and UTV (formerly Ulster Television) provides exactly the positive news the commercial radio sector needs at this time. The merger would bring together two national stations, Virgin Radio and TalkSport, under the same ownership, creating opportunities to increase these stations’ audiences, grow their revenue yields, and improve profitability whilst, at the same time, reducing operational costs by combining their management and sales functions.

NTL’s Q2 results were again adversely affected by merger-related costs

Google’s phenomenal ascent is built on its domination of search, now the main growth driver of online advertising and accounting for 59% of the UK internet ad market which we estimate will be worth £2 billion this year or about 13% of total ad spend

The UK continues to be the largest and fastest growing national digital TV (DTV) market in Europe. We now expect 75% of UK TV homes to be equipped with digital reception by the end of 2006, rising to over 85% by the commencement of digital switchover in autumn 2008.

We have argued that mobile operators offering free broadband makes little sense from an economic perspective, and it now appears that it has little draw for consumers as well (which is lucky given its very high cost)

A large number of mobile operators are launching ‘convergence’ offers in Europe (including Vodafone across all its major subsidiaries), and this poor result in the UK suggests that this will prove a needless distraction for them

The latest RAJAR radio data (Q2 2006) delivered further bad news to the commercial radio sector, whose audience share has fallen year-on-year in all but four quarters of the last eight years to the benefit of the BBC. Commercial stations’ share of listening has dropped from a peak of 51% in Q2 1998 to below 43% this year, a level last witnessed in 1993. In the intervening thirteen years, commercial radio has launched one national and 124 local analogue stations, as well as 163 digital stations, although this unprecedented growth in supply has apparently failed to stimulate any long-term gains in share.

Market leaders Orange and Free increased their DSL retail market shares, while (newly IPOed) Neuf just managed to hold its retail market share (including AOL FR), while that of smaller ISPs (as a group) declined

Group revenue growth remains positive, but intensifying competition in residential services and the absence of further big wins in corporate contracts mean that it looks more vulnerable than it has for some time