There's been a lot of news over the past two days about a confirmed £817m takeover approach for Richard Branson's Virgin Mobile company (U.K.) by cable telco NTL (who are also in the process of a £6bn merger with rival cable firm Telewest). Reports suggest that Branson is aiming for the "quadruple play" market, offering users an all-encompassing TV, broadband, fixed-line and mobile service -- possibly including exclusive sport content and on-demand/movie download services -- but as Tim Weber of BBC News suggests, we've been here before; Vizzavi, the ill-fated alliance of Vodafone, Canal plus and Vivendi Universal and the AOL/Time Warner merger being the best two examples.
Irrespective of this, shares in BT and BSkyB took a rattling today -- Sky because it doesn't have a mobile phone offering, and BT because it doesn't even own its own mobile phone service anymore.
BSkyB shares dropped 2.97% to 490.00p and BT saw a fall of 1.87% to 210.25p.
Virgin Mobile leapt 31.50 (10.13%) to 342.50p.
