Last week, Orange UK closed its online shop, online customer service and online account management, moving them all to the EE web site.

You might say the future is starting to look less bright for the Orange brand in the UK.

Tom Alexander, who co-founded Virgin Mobile in 1999 and was CEO at Everything Everywhere until 2011, has returned to the mobile industry as non-executive chairman of Viacloud UK.

He’ll be working with a recently-appointed management team that includes CEO Emanuele Angelidis, Chief Commercial Officer Tim Stone, Chief Technology Officer Jon Kandiah and Chief Financial Officer Richard Schaefer.

Quarterly results from EE show that 318,000 customers (2.3% of EE’s post-paid customer base) have signed up for the network’s 4G service in the first five months.

It says this means it’s on track to have more than one million 4G customers by the end of 2013.

EE says it’s going to double the speed and the capacity of its 4G network in the UK. As a result, maximum data speeds are expected to exceed 80Mbps with an average of more than 20Mbps.

In addition, EE is dedicating more of its 1800MHz spectrum to 4G service.

A promotional deal with EE has seen 40 black cabs in London and 10 in Birmingham turned into mobile WiFi hotspots. Each taxi has been given its own 4G data connection via a MiFi wireless router.

The promotional 4GEE campaign will run for three months.

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 start this week's show with news about the European Commission's plans to end mobile roaming charges completely from next year.

We're also talking about the future facing Twitter and Dell, Vodafone's security challenges in Germany, app development, wireless charging, mobile payments and Nokia's Android-based smartphones.

This week's show is packed with new products, including two iPhones, three smartwatches, two Android smartphones and a couple of innovative lens-based camera accessories.

We also find time to talk about mobile security, virtual networks and being dishonest via text message.

We're back after a short break last week - and just in time for three of the biggest industry news stories of the year.

Microsoft's CEO announces his retirement, then Vodafone sells its US operation for $130 billion... and now Nokia's mobile phone business is being bought. Alongside these reports there's also time to talk about 4G in the UK, children with mobiles, roaming charges and the future of smartphones.

In this special feature we're talking to David Akka, who tells us why he says Android is dead, why Chromecast is an omen for the mobile industry, why OS companies are getting into hardware and what the future holds for the mobile industry.

David is UK managing director of Magic Software and describes himself as a 'recovering techie'. His personal blog is at davidakka.com.

There's good news for Telefonica as it's chosen to support the UK's smart meter rollout - but bad news for fans of the Microsoft Tag barcode, which is being discontinued in a couple of years' time.

We're also talking about drivers who use mobile phones illegally, Amazon's new service for mobile developers, the forthcoming Kazam smartphone, mobile advertising, satellite broadband, wearable security accessories and a word that's completely unacceptable to Motorola.