FTI Consulting News Bytes – 21st January 2022

This week’s news

BBC funding frozen

Culture Secretary Nadine Dorries announced the licence fee will be frozen for two years in what the Financial Times described as “one of the least generous financial packages for the corporation in decades.” The announcement was said to be part of “Operation Red Meat” – a series of populist announcements aimed at placating Tory MPs as the prime minister faces criticism over parties held at Downing Street during lockdown. The news split media. The Mail on Sunday supports the funding freeze, suggesting the BBC is biased against the Conservative government having adopted a “single set of opinions” that makes it “barely [able to] conceive that any other view of the world exists.” The Financial Times takes a different position, calling for “the most trusted broadcaster worldwide” to be safeguarded particularly in an era of fake news. The debate looks set to rumble on.

“One of the defining deals for the next era of consumer technology”

Microsoft this week announced that it has agreed the $68.7bn acquisition of Activision Blizzard, with Richard Waters of the Financial Times believing that it “could turn out to be one of the defining deals for the next era of consumer technology”. Sony’s shares fell 10% in Tokyo on the back of the news, as some analysts have concerns that Microsoft could make Activision’s hit franchise Call of Duty, a series that is available on all consoles, exclusive to its platform. “The deal is likely to catch the attention of watchdogs, who have mostly let the $2.3 trillion company skate by”, according to Breakingviews.

5G causes turbulence for US airlines

According to the BBC, the 10 biggest US airlines have asked for 5G to be excluded from “the approximate two miles of airport runways” amid concerns that the C-band 5G signals will disrupt planes’ navigation systems, particularly those used in bad weather. Telecom companies Verizon and AT&T argued that C-band 5G has been deployed in about 40 other countries without aviation interference issues, but agreed to temporarily scale back 5G at certain US airport runways while pushing ahead with national rollouts.

“The beginning of a new chapter for the mobile industry”

Vodafone launched its first 5G OpenRAN site in the UK this week, as part of the 2,500 that the company has committed to setting up across the UK by 2027. Andrea Dona, Chief Network Officer at Vodafone UK believes that it is “the beginning of a new chapter for the mobile industry.” However Scott Bicheno of telecoms.com is more sceptical, suggesting it’s still “far from guaranteed that OpenRAN will deliver on its many promises.” Nevertheless, he praises Vodafone’s proactivity and writes that the operator “is taking the long view on this technology, and that it views its benefit to be as much about the increased innovation that is likely to accompany an enlarged vendor ecosystem.”

Tackling misinformation: censorship not the solution

Social media companies have been under increasing pressure to better moderate offensive and misleading content on their platforms. However, a new report from the Royal Society of UK scientists claims misinformation should not be removed, as reported by the BBC. Professor Nielsen believes that removing misinformation would confirm the “worst suspicions” of citizens that already lack trust in established institutions. But social media companies are not off the hook entirely. The report suggests these companies should instead focus on adjusting their algorithms to prevent certain tweets going viral, allowing people to speak their mind, but not “guaranteeing them an audience of millions.”

Top Tweets of the Week

• News anchor John Erlichman: Microsoft’s biggest acquisitions:
  Activision Blizzard: $68.7 billion
  Linkedin: $26.2 billion
  Nuance: $19.7 billion
  Skype: $8.5 billion
  ZeniMax: $7.5 billion
  GitHub: $7.5 bilion
  Nokia phone unit: $7.2 billion
  Quantive: $6.3 billion
  Mojang (Minecraft): $2.5 billion
• Telegraph Technology Editor James Titcomb on Activision Blizzard deal: Weird how people still don’t really like to accept that gaming is this massive part of the economy and so have to dress it up as “metaverse”
• Software developer Kieron Quinn:  Metaverse Walmart? Nah mate I’m going to the 90s VR Sainsbury’s. cc @sainsburyarch you might like this old @BBCNWT clip

Number of the Week

200,000 – the number of Wordle downloads per week

What’s happening next week?

• Microsoft Q2 results – 25 January
• Meta Q4 results; Tesla Q4 results; Apple Q1 results; BBC Director General quizzed on cut backs; Global Competitiveness Report – 26 January
• Samsung Electronics Q4; Comcast Q4 results; Holocaust Memorial Day – 27 January

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