BT’s announcement of a project to extend fibre beyond the exchange for some existing homes as well as newly built ones is good PR, a useful regulatory gambit, and offers the prospect of regaining some initiative from unbundlers and Virgin Media at the wholesale and retail levels respectively

The current process for a sale of Tiscali Spa in whole or part appears to be breaking down, just as the prospects for standalone ISPs in the UK are becoming less certain

The decline in broadband market growth has accelerated, with market net additions in Q1 down on Q4 for the first time in three years. Household penetration reached 59%

In our view the potential for synergies from an acquisition of Thus by C&W, though more limited than might be supposed, would still have a significant impact on the combined entity at the EBITDA level

We expect the TNS-GfK merger proposal to be examined closely by the European Commission, and anticipate competition concerns to be raised in the market for television audience measurement (TAM)

Having acquired national broadcast TV rights for premium content, France Télécom’s Orange TV will launch on satellite on 3rd July and introduce subscription football and film and series services from August, in a first for a major European telecoms incumbent

Consumer take-up both of DAB receiver hardware and of listening to digital-only radio stations has been slow, in spite of considerable investment in content and in transmission infrastructure for the platform by the BBC and commercial radio since 1995

Digital TV growth has consistently exceeded expectations since the launch of Freeview in October 2002, while 2007 saw a record annual increase in digital TV homes reception from 72.0% to 82.3%. These forecasts update our previous forecasts of DTV platform growth issued in December 2007 (see UK DTV Homes Platform Forecasts: 2003-2017 [2007-116]), taking into account the very strong final quarter of 2007 and recent market developments

France’s Council of State gave the green light to the draft law on ‘Creation and the Internet’, to combat internet piracy of content. If it completes the final hurdle of adoption by the Parliament, most likely in the autumn, France could become the first country to adopt a three-strikes rule to disconnect file-sharers

European revenue growth improved by a whole percentage point this quarter, jumping to 2.2% from 1.2% last quarter. Most of this (0.7 percentage points) was due to a reduced regulatory impact, and this should continue to improve throughout this year, with the impact due to drop from about 4% to less than 1% by early next year