This report looks at the characteristics of today’s UK broadband users in order to understand (a) likely future trends in subscriber numbers growth; and (b) how usage patterns vary between broadband and narrowband customers. We carried out a large piece of market research during the summer and the results are presented here.

The UK cable sector is now hardly covered by investment bank analysts. (It may be impossible to find anyone who isn’t tarnished by having a previous ‘Buy’ recommendation on the stocks.) But since NTL’s return from its near death experience, its share price has performed extremely well. This note takes a close look at the fundamentals for UK cable.

In this report we compare the mobile markets and operator business models in Western Europe, the US and Japan. We examine the main differences, and judge whether convergence is possible or likely.

On 21st August Hutchison Whampoa reported on the progress of its 3G investments as part of its interim report. This brief note examines this progress compared to our expectations, and reassesses the threat to the GSM operators.

BT and Yahoo! recently announced the launch of BT Yahoo! Broadband for September 2003, a co-branded DSL transport/personalised home page/broadband portal service. The goal is to revitalise BTopenworld, which lost 10 percentage points in DSL market share in H1 2003. The new service will be provided to BTOW subscribers at the same price as the DSL service today, improving BTOW's value-for-money proposition and providing clear proprietary differentiation over other ISPs.

By the 25th of July, we expect the Communications Bill will have received royal assent. The Bill, together with Oftel's new tasks as regulator pending the handover to Ofcom, represents the UK's implementation of the new EU telecoms regulatory framework. All licences issued under the existing telecoms regulatory framework will lapse and a new system of authorising providers will begin. This note covers the basics of the new regime, the existing state of play on the UK's implementation, and the main conclusion that can be drawn at this point.

Global Services is the new name for BT's Ignite division. The structure of this important part of BT's business is complex and extremely difficult to understand. BT itself promotes the division as its 'hidden jewel', even though its financial performance in recent years has been little short of catastrophic. Investors rightly remain sceptical.

This note reports on the results of our latest bi-monthly survey in May 2003 of handset owners and purchase intentions for the near future. Highlights include the rising share of Nokia to 57% of the UK handset market, consistent with past survey results indicating that Nokia remains the favoured brand by a wide margin, both for new entrants and for existing users upgrading to a newer model.

On June 9th '3' launched 2 new tariffs aggressively targeting the core of the GSM contract base. In this report we look at the potential impact of these on both H3G and the UK GSM operators.

Part of our regular series on the UK broadband and Internet markets, this note highlights the shifting fortunes of ISPs and cable operators in competing against BT brands on the fast growing residential broadband market.