Digital Bomb lll is our third annual assessment of the global market for digital set-top boxes and associated hardware. So far, our forecasts have been accurate and we continue to see relatively slow growth in the next few years.

Last week’s decision from the Competition Appeal Tribunal was seen as a victory for Freeserve over BT. Does this mean Oftel will have to use a different approach to regulation? Does the decision herald a new era in the regulation of the telecommunications and media industries in the UK? We think not.

Vivendi's only agenda at this time is to effect a disposal of its non-core assets for the best price to reduce debt to manageable levels. This note casts a critical eye on prospects for sale of USA Networks (good), Universal Studios (poor) and VU Games (good), as well as the disposal and valuations for other assets such as Universal Music, Groupe Canal+ and Cegetel/SFR.

Wanadoo reached an important milestone in 2002, reporting its first (very small) positive EBITDA margin on its French Internet business, thanks to broadband-related revenue increases and lower narrowband and broadband access costs. In contrast, losses widened at Wanadoo's Internet properties outside France, in particular Freeserve in the UK and Eresmas is Spain, but these were more than fully offset by profits on the Directories segment. This note looks ahead to 2003, when Wanadoo expects to reach positive EBITDA on the Internet segment as a whole, thanks to continued improvement in France and tightly contained losses at Freeserve and Eresmas.

The recent launch of online gaming from the major games consoles makers has focused attention again on the future of Xbox. Will the online version, Xbox Live, enable Microsoft to improve its position versus Sony? Our view is that Sony’s dominance of this generation of consoles will continue.

The troubles of the global music industry are usually assumed to derive from the growth of piracy. This report argues that physical piracy is probably no more of a problem than it has been in the recent past. Digital piracy is indeed becoming more important, but still is by no means the only explanation of declining music sales.

This issue of our regular report on TV trends in the UK looks at pay-TV subscriber numbers, the position of Freeview, and the impact of the huge expansion in the number of digital channels. Our analysis tries to clear away the fog produced by problems with BARB data over the past year.

BT will be announcing tomorrow its latest results on meeting the target of 1 million broadband connections by H1 2003. Some difficulty could be anticipated from the slow monthly pace of connections in H2 2002, mainly due to disappointing take-up of the revolutionary ISP-less BT Broadband product (as we had anticipated), despite high levels of marketing investment.

The public debate about the ITV merger has revolved around whether the maintenance of two separate sales houses is the appropriate remedy to be imposed by any Competition Commission inquiry. We argue that the real issues are more complex.

Interactivity via the TV set was one of the most misguided bubbles of the late 1990s. Fancy software and mini keyboards were supposed to provide a replacement for the PC. As matters have turned out, the use of SMS to accompany TV programmes is the means by which new technologies provide a limited form of interactivity to viewers.