The directors of Eircom, the Irish incumbent, have recommended acceptance of a joint offer from Babcock and Brown Capital and the Eircom Employee Share Ownership Trust 

But BT’s cost performance is improving. Group EBITDA growth has accelerated whilst capital expenditure has been held steady, increasing cash flow (EBITDA minus capital expenditure) 

BT is continuing to grow revenue in spite of increasing competition in the residential market

The experience of Versatel (now owned by Tele2) in The Netherlands provides a cautionary tale for new entrant altnets hoping to use premium content to gain broadband market share in a well-contested and maturing broadband market (58% household penetration). In late 2004,Versatel was the surprise winner of the 2000-2008 broadcast licence for the domestic football league Eredivisie (carried only by Versatel and licensed to satellite TV), but Versatel's broadband market share and that of other unbundlers fell in 2005 while those of incumbent KPN (operating under three brands) and cable rose.

We welcome that the company appears to be de-emphasising 3G, with SACs reduced and 3G as a percentage of handset sales dropping from 20% to 12%. Unfortunately, just as Vodafone is recovering from the 3G industry fad, it seems keen to get distracted by another – convergence 

Illiad’s new Freebox in France promises savings of ‘up to’ 40% for mobile users by using Wi-Fi to make mobile calls at home, creating fears that it will harm the French mobile industry 

BSkyB plans to unbundle 1,200 exchanges by the end of 2007, enabling it to offer shared or full LLU to 70% of UK homes. It will offer ‘free’ broadband up to 2Mb to all and only Sky DTH customers served by its unbundled exchanges. Or they can pay a little more, £5 and £10 a month respectively, for broadband up to 8 Mb or 16 Mb. In addition, all Sky Broadband customers will be able to take BSkyB’s telephony offer, Sky Talk for an additional £14 a month, which includes line rental and unlimited calls in the UK.

BT plans to launch BT Vision – its hybrid Freeview-IPTV service – in Q4 2006. The aim is to broaden the appeal of its broadband offerings and help it to withstand aggressive competition from local-loop unbundlers such as Carphone Warehouse, Wanadoo/Orange and, soon, BSkyB 

Of the three known candidates, BSkyB stands to gain the most from acquiring AOL UK’s customer base, except that it would deepen an already challenging LLU cash flow profile. Orange’s market position would also be significantly strengthened by acquiring AOL UK’s customer base, with the added benefit of displacing a potentially harmful rival in BSkyB 

Carphone Warehouse (CPW) has launched a broadband/telephony bundle which effectively offers free broadband to non-cable customers in urban areas 

O2’s purchase of Be may only have cost £50 million but its entry into UK broadband may ultimately prove an expensive distraction 

H3G’s 2005 results underperformed in 3 key areas: net subscriber additions were lower than promised, unit SACs were higher than promised and the group failed to reach EBITDA breakeven as promised 

2006 promises to be much worse due to a markedly bigger drop of about 11.5% in weighted share of commercial impacts in 2005, due to a number of factors (not just multichannel platform growth), and an anticipated decline of between 2% and 5% in total TV NAR in 2006. Taking a mid-value of -3.5% yields a drop in ITV plc NAR of around £180 million in 2006 

NTL’s acquisition of Virgin Mobile will improve NTL’s prospects for revenue growth and enable it to exploit the Virgin brand and marketing expertise 

Mobile video services (along with music) have been heralded as the ‘killer applications’ set to deliver the revenue and customer satisfaction long promised by 3G. In our report Mobile TV: Trials and Tribulations [2005-20] we addressed live TV services; in this report we now consider non-live video downloading services. We conclude that while this is currently the largest ‘media’ mobile service (excluding ringtones) and it may continue to grow strongly in the short term, the market opportunity is ultimately limited due to the small size of video files downloadable over 3G, and that live TV and PC-based downloads will eventually force the market into decline.

The cause of subscription take-up already falling behind management targets set in mid 2005 is the CanalSat DTH basic rather than the Canal+ premium service, now under pressure from rival DSL and DTT services 

BT Wholesale will launch IPStream Max, a rate adaptive ADSL product, on 31st March 2006, providing a downstream data rate greater than 6.5Mbit/s – a line speed that should support a wider range of good-quality video applications – to 25% of UK telephone lines

We believe that its focus on 3G is to blame, and the company seems poised to repeat this mistake with a focus on the latest industry fad, convergence