Hedge fund manager Crispin Odey has argued that British pay-TV firm British Sky Broadcasting's (BSkyB's) plan to takeover Sky Deutschland significantly "understates" the value of the German company.

Defying soaring competition in the broadcast and broadband market, BSkyB gained thousands of new TV customers in the three months to March, taking its total TV subscriber number to more than 10 million.

Since satellite broadcaster, BSkyB, has been able to show phenomenal financial results, media moghul Rupert Murdoch is facing pressure to raise the offer price.

Rupert's media company, News Corp had earlier offered to buy out 61 per cent of stake in BskyB. This is the remaining stake that is not with News Corp at present and the company has been trying hard to acquire it for a long time. Despite that, it is facing a lengthy inquiry that deals with competition and says that acquiring the firm would give too much control to Rupert in UK.

BBC-backed video-on-demand platform YouView will probably hit services like that of BskyB after its launch, a fresh report from Evolution Securities claims.

According to Media analyst Steve Malcolm, digital switchover will bring the subscription-free broadband video-on-demand platform YouView to around 22 per cent of households in the UK, which could hit Sky subscriptions very hard.

Currently, pay-TV market in the UK is dominated by BSkyB, with more than 10 million subscribers.

In order to investigate the News Corporation's plan to buy the rest of the 61% stake of broadcaster BSkyB, the Business Secretary, Vince Cable has hired Ofcom to make inquiry into the matter.

Under the investigation, the probability of possessing media plurality will be assessed, the phenomenon which is associated with analyzing the degree of concentration of news outlets under the ownership of one organization.

Satellite broadcaster BSkyB signed 640,000 more phone & broadband customers than rival firm BT in the past three months ended september.

Revealing the third-quarter figures, BSkyB said that they gained net 178,000 broadband ISP subscriber, while new telephony customers and line rental customers jumped by 203,000 and 260,000, respectively.

It owes to a mix of new services like that of 3D, along with a strong advertising campaign that all sections, viz. Sky TV, broadband and telephony, saw a jump in new customers.