Tom Rebbeck

I’m not sure, but I suspect Starmer couldn’t quite match this.

SpaceX: the final frontier of IPOs Can Elon Musk’s moonshot deliver the mooted $1.75tn valuation?

Interesting long read on the SpaceX IPO.

"SpaceX is an extraordinary success story, but a great company and a well-structured IPO are not the same thing."

giftarticle.ft.com/giftarticle/...

Ziff Davis to Sell Connectivity Division to Accenture for $1.2 Billion The company said that the division, which includes Ookla’s Speedtest, Ekahau, Downdetector and RootMetrics brands, generated $231 million in revenue last year.

Ziff Davis sold Ookla and other assets for $1.2bn. Before the deal, Ziff Davis's market cap was $1.05bn. Someone did very well out of this deal.

www.wsj.com/business/tel...

How premium is premium? How big is the premium segment — and how much more can operators really charge for it? Orange held its capital markets day in mid‑February 2026. The session was well received: JP Morgan even described...

Is Orange being realistic about competition? Or complacent?

Short piece on the premium vs low-cost debate.

www.linkedin.com/pulse/how-pr...

"We compete in a market with convergent offers at EUR11 with our FMC ARPU of EUR52 and we have been able to remain stable”

So many questions on this. How long do they expect to charge 5x more than competitors? (The data is also wrong - Digi's share of revenue is already 11%, & growing fast)

Bit late, but catching up on Orange's capital markets day. They were asked about competition in Spain. Low-cost players were dismissed "They are addressing a segment that in terms of revenue is probably not higher than 10-15%" Digi "has a revenue share of probably not more than 5% in the country"

Share price changes on an operator-by-operator basis, so far in 2026. (For comparison, the S&P500 is up 0.3% so far this year.)

The HALO doesn't seem to be slipping, at least based on the share price. Very big gains across pretty much all operators so far in 2026 (except in Asia).

Watching (or trying to) the Orange Capital markets day. Lots of discussion about the quality of their services, and yet the video keeps glitching. Not the best look.

(I don't think it is my internet - everything else works fine)

It is the flip of the telco to techco, which I thought was largely nonsense. Even real tech companies didn't call themselves techcos, and operators have few similarities with Google or Apple or Microsoft.

Wall Street’s Latest Bet Is on ‘HALO’ Companies With AI Immunity Deere and McDonald’s have become darlings to investors worried about broad AI disruption.

I've not heard any discussion of telecoms as a HALO stock, but telecoms (at least, telecoms networks/wholesale) has a lot of its characteristics: asset-heavy, low obsolescence (hard to replace with code), high barriers to entry, and providing an essential function

www.wsj.com/finance/stoc...

English Premier League to launch streaming service in international shake-up Online platform will be available in Singapore next season and could be rolled out to other overseas markets

Interesting that this has been developed with StarHub.

giftarticle.ft.com/giftarticle/... English Premier League to launch streaming service in international shake-up

O2 Satellite will work with a curious mix of services. Lots of weather apps. And does anyone still use Yahoo Mail?

Pile ‘em high and sell ‘em cheap.

Digi’s quarterly investor calls always worth a listen. When asked about prices in Portugal:

“We have no intention to do any price increases...becoming profitable is just a matter of volume. It is not a matter of price.”

Words that will thrill its competitors.

Is the telecoms sector losing its religion? This and other topics discussed in this podcast on Analysys Mason research priorities for 2026.

analysysmason.podbean.com/e/analysys-m...

The European Commission wants European Champions in the telco sector. Liberty Global, meanwhile, plans to move in the opposite direction and spin Ziggo out from the group.

www.libertyglobal.com/wp-content/u...

Accenture combats AI refuseniks by linking promotions to log-ins Consulting firms use ‘carrot and stick’ with some senior staff less willing to use technology than junior colleagues

“promotion to leadership positions would require “regular adoption” of AI”

giftarticle.ft.com/giftarticle/... Accenture combats AI refuseniks by linking promotions to log-ins

The FT contest that challenged readers to redraw Europe’s borders The extraordinary story of when, two months into the bloody Great War, the newspaper launched an unusual competition

Fascinating article. In 1914, the FT had a competition for readers to see who could guess the map of future Europe.

giftarticle.ft.com/giftarticle/... The FT contest that challenged readers to redraw Europe’s borders

BT Group announces leadership succession within Openreach and BT International BT Group today announces leadership succession within Openreach and BT International.  Katie Milligan, currently Deputy CEO of Openreach, will become CEO, Openreach on 01 April 2026. She succeeds Cliv...

Reshuffle at BT.

Clive Selley, Openreach boss, given control of BT International while his deputy at Openreach, Kate Mulligan, steps up to CEO role.

Possibly a sign that BT wants more of the same at Openreach, while more changes to come for International.

newsroom.bt.com/bt-group-ann...

The rich get richer (sort of).

"A recent paper by Fiona Chen and James Stratton of Harvard University examined the productivity of programmers using AI, and found that it resulted in an increase in tasks completed only for those at firms selling software."

"In the mid-1990s American firms kept about 30% of their software investment in-house; the figure today is half that"

www.economist.com/business/202...

Japan’s KDDI finds up to $1.5bn in fictitious revenues Telecoms group postpones third-quarter results amid probe into ‘suspicions regarding inappropriate transactions’

“this incident has seriously damaged the credibility of KDDI", according to CEO.

Which seems to be putting it mildly.

giftarticle.ft.com/giftarticle/...

High-Speed Internet Boom Hits Low-Tech Snag: a Labor Shortage There aren’t enough linemen and other skilled workers to lay all the fiber-optic cable needed to achieve nationwide broadband internet.

“We just don’t have the people to do the work”

www.wsj.com/business/tel...

Patrick Drahi shifts assets worth billions away from creditors New filings reveal the full extent to which the tycoon has weakened the position of lenders to his telecoms business

"its junior bonds are trading at just 24 cents on the euro."

Reading this, 24 cents still sounds pretty high to me.

giftarticle.ft.com/giftarticle/...

Reform UK is filling up nicely with all the ‘wrong’ Tories There are now more members of Liz Truss’s cabinet in Reform than on Kemi Badenoch’s front bench, says Julian Glover

"There are now more members of Liz Truss’s cabinet in Reform than on Kemi Badenoch’s front bench"

www.independent.co.uk/voices/conse...

"Yet here he was: from bored of peace to board of peace in five days. Forget the road to Damascus; true conversions happen on the jet to Davos."

Good piece from @henrymance.ft.com

giftarticle.ft.com/giftarticle/...

What to give the consumer who has everything What can an operator sell to a consumer who already has all that they need? This presentation explores the options.

Long, recorded presentation on the state of the telecoms market.

Most customers have (or soon will) all of the fixed and mobile they need. What do operators do next?

www.analysysmason.com/research/con...

Mobile customers like large data plans, but not unlimited plans.

We've seen this result in previous years and it isn't changing - I suspect customers feel they pay more for something they don't need .

Hard to reverse move to unlimited where it's the default, but that's not the case everywhere.

After years of going sideways, shares in European telcos did well in 2025. Most are seeing slight increases in revenue and profits, and may face reduced competition.

Interesting too to see how well Digi is doing - presumably as investors think it will increase competition (and do well).

Billionaire Patrick Drahi comes out fighting as creditors fall through ‘trap doors’ Lenders to Franco-Israeli tycoon’s Altice empire are guessing his next move after falling victim to an aggressive restructuring

Hard to see this ending well:

"creditors have been left with about €300mn of earnings underpinning their €8bn of debt"

giftarticle.ft.com/giftarticle/...