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:

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?

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.

Mark Bridge writes:

We’re delighted to be a media partner to Apps World 2014. This year Apps World has outgrown its previous home and is moving to ExCeL London, alongside the River Thames. There’ll be over 350 exhibitors and even more workshops than before, with a number of free conference sessions alongside premium options.

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.

This week's edition of The Fonecast starts with news that Motorola Mobility is to lose around a fifth of its staff worldwide. There's also more reorganisation at Nokia, which is passing its Qt software business to Digia.

In addition we're talking about a new US partnership between Starbucks and Square, some good news for Research In Motion, a worrying report for Samsung and a major milestone for Shazam.

We start this week's edition of The Fonecast with a new product from RIM: the mobile-enabled BlackBerry PlayBook. Next comes Vodafone's move to Tech City and Google moving its mobile wallet into the cloud.

You'll also find the latest batch of quarterly results, some mobile data research and a story about sheep sending SMS text messages.

There are plenty of quarterly results to report in this week's edition of The Fonecast, including Samsung, Apple, Telefonica and Facebook. In addition, we have new research that shows how smartphone sales are racing ahead as feature phone sales slow down.

There's also news about mobile coverage in the Channel Tunnel, mobile application downloads and m-commerce.

In today's podcast we're talking to Doug Suriano, Chief Technology Officer at mobile broadband solutions company Tekelec, about net neutrality.

Net neutrality is the principle that consumers are not restricted in the ways they're able to use their internet connection. The topic is often in the headlines, either because some governments may want to prevent their citizens from viewing certain types of information - or because of commercial restrictions.

We start this week's podcast with two news stories from Ofcom. Not only has the regulator announced its plans for the UK's 4G spectrum auction, it's also released research that shows we're texting more than we talk.

There's a look at the changing relationship between HTC and Beats Electronics, O2's apology for the network outage earlier this month and the Wholesale Applications Community's integration into the GSMA.