Neelie Kroes, European Commission Vice President for the Digital Agenda, announces the EC's new plans to cut the cost of roaming from next year. Mobile phone calls, text messages and data charges will all be given maximum limits - and new 'roaming only' tariffs could also be introduced.

The European Commission has launched a public consultation asking whether there are benefits in a system that would allow businesses to use the same telephone number in all EU Member States.

Neelie Kroes, European Commission Vice-President for the Digital Agenda, has urged mobile phone operators to raise parents' awareness of the potential risks faced by children who use smartphones, such as access to 'adult' content.

While welcoming the progress made by operators on their work to keep children safe while using mobile phones, she warned that parents were often "not as tuned into the latest developments in mobile phones as the younger generation".

The European Commission has set out a Digital Agenda for Europe that explains how it believes Information and Communication Technologies should be used to deliver sustainable economic and social benefits within Europe.

Launching the Digital Agenda earlier this week, Neelie Kroes - European Commission Vice-President for the Digital Agenda – said "We must put the interests of Europe's citizens and businesses at the forefront of the digital revolution and so maximise the potential of Information and Communications Technologies to advance job creation, sustainability and social inclusion."

The European Commission has implemented new rules for high-speed mobile internet services. EU members that release 800MHz frequencies as part of the 'digital dividend' resulting from the switchover from analogue to digital television broadcasting are now required to make the frequencies available for wireless broadband applications such as LTE or WiMAX.

Mark Windle, head of marketing at OpenCloud, predicts that this year’s reduction in the number of traditional telecoms operators in some countries will provide an opportunity for other operators to innovate and capture market share in 2016.

He says next year will be a year of rapid change for telecoms… whether it’s MVNO disruption, competitive tariff pricing or simply defence from the ‘dark art’ of hacking.

Mark Bridge writes:

The most memorable moments in life often go unrecorded. You don't have your camera in your hands. Your finger is still hovering over the 'pause' button on your audio recorder. Or you were simply too busy experiencing whatever was happening. It's all about the one that got away.

That's where Kapture can help.

Mark Bridge writes:

James Rosewell shows me a colourful roll of paper that's the width of an iPhone but well over three metres long. When I look closer, I can see it's a printed copy of the Wall Street Journal's mobile website. That's a lot of scrolling to do... and a pretty unfriendly user experience for anyone reading the news online. Why does it work so badly?

We begin this week's programme by looking at Vodafone's acquisition plans in Spain before moving on to discuss universal mobile chargers and 4G roaming.

There's also time to talk about UK mobile coverage, EE's new customer tracking service, contactless transactions and a smartphone camera that can identify objects hidden behind something else.

This year's Mobile World Congress was notable for the number of product launches by handset manufacturers. To get a better understanding of smartphone manufacturing, we spoke to Johan Lodenius of semiconductor company MediaTek.

He gave us a simple overview of how 'fabless' manufacturing works, discussed developments in smartphones and wearable devices, contemplated the end of the PC era and talked about the importance of driving costs down.

This week's programme opens with a quick look at David Cameron's commitment to 5G technology and the Internet of Things, which was made in a speech at CeBIT.

Iain and Mark then move on to talk about the other big mobile news headlines from the past few days, including the forthcoming Paym m-payment service, new HTC and LG smartphones, the growth of Chinese handset manufacturers, wearable devices, in-car connectivity and damaged iPhones.

Messaging was very much on the agenda at Mobile World Congress this year, following Facebook's announcement that it was planning to acquire WhatsApp in a 19 billion dollar deal. So if the future for this type of internet-based 'over the top' messaging service looks good, what does this mean for SMS?

To find out more, we spoke to Stacy Adams of mBlox to learn what was happening in the messaging world, to find out how SMS is being integrated with mobile apps - and to discover some of the other ways SMS was being used by businesses today.

Even at Mobile World Congress, the relevance of the mobile network operator can sometimes be forgotten. So for a different perspective on this year's event, we spoke to Samuel Johnston from British mobile crowd-sourcing firm OpenSignal.

Samuel discussed the announcements from MWC14 and OpenSignal's latest report into 4G LTE coverage around the world, as well as giving us an exclusive insight into OpenSignal's next research subject.