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.

Mark Bridge writes:

There’s plenty of snow disrupting the UK – but, thanks to the mobile telecoms industry, thousands upon thousands of people are able to work from home. We’re all feeling pretty pleased with ourselves right now, aren’t we?

Pedestrians may have been skating down pavements but a different kind of trouble on the high street dominated much of last week as music, DVD and occasional mobile phone retailer HMV went into administration.

Mark Bridge writes:

It’s the week before Christmas, which can only mean one thing for the mobile industry: plenty of research news. Yes, when there isn’t anything new to talk about, a survey or forecast is the perfect way to fill the silence.

Mind you, things haven’t been entirely quiet when it comes to mobile products and services.

Mark Bridge writes:

Mobile networks have changed, haven’t they?

Once they were all about delivering service. Coverage. Quality. Price. Now it’s much more about branding.

Everything Everywhere has announced it’s to become EE, an obvious abbreviation that’s been used in mobile industry briefings pretty much since the company was created two years ago. It joins the likes of Kentucky Fried Chicken, Hennes & Mauritz, British Home Stores, Independent Television and Marks & Spencer, although all of these took decades to transition into businesses that were just described by their initials.

Mark Bridge writes:

It was a week of dramatic contrasts in the mobile phone industry. We started with Everything Everywhere’s news that 4G service was coming to the UK this year – possibly with a new brand that’ll work alongside Orange and T-Mobile. Meanwhile Three UK seems to have its own plans that involve acquiring some excess 4G spectrum from Everything Everywhere. There was much muttering from Vodafone and O2, although whether this’ll manifest itself as legal action remains to be seen.

Robin Kent writes:

With this week’s announcement that Everything Everywhere has been given the green light to launch the UK’s first 4G service, competing operators such as Vodafone and O2 are getting hot under the collar. With every day that goes by, these operators lose vital competitiveness as the market creeps away them towards Orange and T-Mobile. This is a real life ‘hare and tortoise’ scenario.

This week's podcast begins with a heated discussion about the UK government's consultation about improving mobile phone coverage.

Iain, James and Mark then move on to talk about over-the-top voice services, mobile internet usage, patent deals, the UK's next spectrum auction and wearable technology.

Leaving your wallet at home and going shopping with nothing more than your mobile phone is still a science-fiction vision of the future.

But it's getting much closer to reality, thanks to a UK-based company called Corethree. They're currently working with a number of public transport operators and have brought mobile tickets to a wide range of smartphones.

The new Microsoft Band, the Samsung Galaxy A smartphones and the Huawei Honor 6 are all discussed in this week's podcast.

We also look at some of the mobile industry's other big stories, including Amazon UK's mobile phone deals, the Lenovo purchase of Motorola Mobility, LG's quarterly results and the anticipated increase in WiFi hotspots.

We start this week's podcast with news that EE now has the largest 4G customer base in Europe, with 5.6 million UK connections.

There's also talk about a new DIY product for the Internet of Things, the disappearance of Nokia branded smartphones, quarterly results for Apple, increasing M2M connections and a growing market for smartwatches.

The new Apple iPad tablets, Google's latest Nexus devices, Android Lollipop, wearable tech from will.i.am and the world's slimmest smartphone all feature in this week's podcast.

We're also talking about free mobile data for Christmas, 4.5G technology being rolled out in the UK, 5G technology being tested in South Korea, the end of an era for webOS and video messages that self-destruct.