Glitzy awards shows, extraterrestrial satellite arrays, packed-out concert arenas: telecoms and media are unquestionably two of the sexiest industries in the world. 

While they may seem wildly different, investors tend to treat telecoms firms like your cable provider and media companies like movie studios as one $5 trillion-strong sector. (“Technology” is sometimes lumped in there too, though it’s now grown so big that many tend to treat it as its own beast.) The analogy used to justify this link-up is that telecoms firms build pipes – laying the infrastructure for communication – which media companies then fill with content for people to consume. Of course, nobody likes paying for pipes unless they’ve got something running through them – and so it’s no surprise that pipe owners and pipe fillers are often one and the same firm. In telecoms and media, Comcast owns NBCUniversal; AT&T owns WarnerMedia; and Verizon owns, er, AOL and Yahoo!...

But all those different business lines can make media and telecoms a formidable sector to wrap your head around. Happily, we are here to help. In this Pack, we’ll walk you through the most important bits of the industry, explaining how they work and how to value company stocks. We’ll also look at the biggest factors shaking things up in the future, ranging from streaming wars to esports. First up: is 5G really good news for telecoms?

The takeaway: Media and telecoms firms often share common owners, which is why investors tend to lump them into one gigantic but complicated sector.