UK telecoms regulator Ofcom wants to ban inflation-related rises in phone and broadband contracts. Instead, it says any potential mid-contract price rises should be set out in pounds and pence.

A new forecast from research specialists Canalys shows the smartphone market is set to recover next year. Worldwide shipments declined by 12% last year but that decline is expected to slow to 5% this year.

Vodafone Group plc and CK Hutchison Group Telecom Holdings Limited have agreed to combine their UK telecommunication businesses, respectively Vodafone UK and Three UK. The merger will create a large new network operator to compete with Virgin Media O2 and EE.

UK mobile payment service Paym will close on 7th March 2023. The service, which allowed users to make and receive payments using their mobile phone numbers, was launched in 2014.

Consumer protection organisation Which? has been given permission by the UK's Competition Appeal Tribunal to represent Apple and Samsung smartphone buyers in a legal case against chip manufacturer Qualcomm.

Here’s an edited transcript of our new monthly podcast, broadcast on 30th January 2015.

[Iain Graham]: Hello, it's Friday 30th January 2015. Welcome to this month's edition of The Fonecast. That’s right, you heard correctly: we’ve temporarily moved to a monthly format. If you’d like to join 51Degrees in sponsoring the podcast and returning us to weekly programmes, please get in touch via our website. Now, on with the show.

Rachel Thomas of Apps World writes:

Babak Parviz, one of the minds behind Google Glass who has just left the company to be VP at Amazon, has been announced as a keynote speaker at this year’s Apps World Europe, from November 12-13 at the ExCeL, London.

Mark Bridge writes:

New Apple products! New Android smart watches!

You’d be forgiven for not having noticed either of those news stories last week. Apple did indeed announce a new iPhone – but it was simply a new iPhone 5c with just 8MB of memory.

Mark Bridge writes:

Patents were a very popular topic of conversation last week. Google sold its Motorola Mobility smartphone business to Lenovo but hung on to most of the patents. Does this mean the patents were the most valuable part of the business? Well, when you look at the difference between the original purchase price and the sale price, it seems a reasonable conclusion.

Mark Bridge writes:

The Rockstar Consortium. That name sounds as though it could be promising more than it can deliver, doesn’t it?  Well, it’s not. It’s the group of mobile companies that picked up Nortel’s portfolio of several thousand tech patents for $4.5 billion. And now, its members – including Apple, Microsoft, BlackBerry, Ericsson and Sony – have set some of those patents on their biggest competitors.

This week's news report begins with quarterly figures from Samsung and Apple - and a discussion about what the future may hold for iOS.

We also talk about instant messaging versus SMS, the end of Best Buy's European joint venture with Carphone Warehouse, patent wars, white spaces and connected cars.

It feels like many people are hanging on to mobile advertising as the future of mobile marketing.

Yet there's much more to mobile marketing than the banner ad. In this podcast a panel of experts considers the latest trends and innovation that could change the future of marketing.

In this special feature we're looking around the GSMA Connected City at Mobile World Congress 2013.

Mark Bridge and Grant Notman discuss machine-to-machine communications and the Internet of Things, meeting people who've worked with 4G-enabled cars, port logistics, connected houses, m-health and the GSMA's own app development programme.

There's a diverse collection of mobile-related news in this week's 30-minute podcast.

We start with the new Twitter music service before moving on to discuss quarterly results, patent licensing, wireless charging, advertising and mobile payments... before ending with a curious report about app-controlled underwear.

This is the second part of our programme recorded at the April 2013 meeting of Mobile Monday London, where a panel of experts discussed the topic 'BYOD: A Faustian Pact?'

The panel was chaired by David Rogers of Copper Horse Solutions. His panellists were Caroline Maloney from Telefonica, Charles Brookson of Azenby, David Arnold from BlackBerry and Gemma Coles from Mubaloo.