Virgin Media has recently upped its mobile prices both within the ‘quad-play’ and on the Virgin Mobile standard prepay product

Growth in revenue and EBITDA was adequate but a nasty surge in capex hit cash flow

Swisscom's recent acquisition of 82% of Fastweb, among the largest altnets in Europe, provides the context for a much-needed strategic review. Fastweb is the principal competitor to Telecom Italia in the supply of telecoms services to business and residential customers, delivered mainly over its own network, which developed through local loop unbundling. Fastweb's has a sterling reputation with customers (in relation to TI's generally poor one). In this context, further network expansion should top Swisscom's review agenda, as well as Fastweb's IPTV offer, which has not proved to be a commercial success

The distribution business was slightly weak despite good like-for-like store sales, due to the lower quality ‘off-the-page’ newspaper advertisement business being successfully cut back by the mobile operators

The release of FY 2007 results on 27th July 2007 confirmed the strong performance of Sky and the success of its multi-product and service strategy over the past year, as reported in its trading update of 11th July

The European Commission has backed DVB-H as the common standard for mobile TV in an attempt to boost investment and rollout of services

Vodafone’s European operations revenue growth dropped, but not as much as various regulatory interventions would have warranted, implying a strong operational performance

Mobile service revenue growth in the top five European markets was 3.6%, a decline of 0.5pps from the previous quarter, although this was substantially driven by the Bersani Decree in Italy outlawing mobile top-up charges from the beginning of March

Another record quarter of subscriber growth testifies again to the strengths of Sky’s marketing strategy and its successful entry into the telecommunications arena. The target of 10 million subscribers by the end of 2010 looks increasingly likely

TM is now looking at a sales target of £450 million instead of £600 million, though the revised target may still be too high, with the sale taking place at a time when regional newspaper fortunes are at a low ebb

Other results present a mixed picture: some improvements in costs, some progress online, but persisting doubts about TM’s ability to match its competitors over national newspaper sales and advertising revenues

Apple has at least revolutionised two aspects of the mobile business: getting customers to queue overnight for a handset, and selling ‘contracts-in-a-box’, neither of which are likely to catch on in Europe