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Ofcom says mobile contracts should ditch inflation-related price rises

Ofcom says mobile contracts should ditch inflation-related price rises

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.
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Global smartphone market is set for recovery, says new forecast

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.
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Vodafone and Three plan to merge their UK businesses

Vodafone and Three plan to merge their UK businesses

New Hutchison/Vodafone network would be biggest UK operator

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.
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UK mobile payment service Paym to close in March 2023

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.
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Qualcomm legal action moves forward in the UK

Qualcomm legal action moves forward in the UK

Which? seeks payout for Samsung and Apple smartphone owners

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.
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Opinion Articles

Monday, March 4, 2013

Last week at The Fonecast: 4th March 2013

What happened at Mobile World Congress?

Mark Bridge writes:

We’re back from Mobile World Congress – and what a show it was. Located at a new site that saw more visitors than ever before, the show had everything… except any particularly obvious theme from hardware manufacturers. Last year was the year of the quad-core smartphone, this year there was plenty of incremental innovation but nothing truly startling.

Probably the biggest shock was the lack of a flagship handset announcement from Samsung, which released an 8-inch tablet and told us the Galaxy S4 (probably not the Galaxy SIV, given the opportunity for sieve-related humour) would be launched on 14th March.

Meanwhile, there was plenty of interest in Mozilla’s Firefox operating system, which was being shown off on smartphones from Alcatel, LG and ZTE. LG also surprised quite a few people by picking up what’s left of the webOS platform from HP. It says it’ll be putting it inside televisions – although that doesn’t necessarily mean we won’t ever see an LG webOS smartphone.

Mobile payments were (still) on the agenda in Barcelona; Visa, Samsung, MasterCard and BlackBerry all had announcements about their plans. There was plenty of research as well, covering everything from mobile advertising to mobile security and SMS spam.

And there were prizes from the GSMA for Samsung and Nokia, plus an award for crowd-sourced coverage map app OpenSignal (UK’s Most Innovative Mobile Company 2013) and the Tethercell battery adaptor (Bluetooth Breakthrough Award).

But not all the week’s big news came from MWC13. Telefonica saved the introduction of its TU Go VoIP app until after the show. It’ll let O2 UK customers make and receive ‘mobile’ calls on any compatible internet-connected device. In addition, it decided to sell its O2 and BE fixed-line broadband businesses to Sky.

Finally, the UK’s 4G auction also came to its official end with Ofcom allocating specific spectrum bands for each winning bidder. BT and Vodafone paid an extra £27 million to choose exactly where in the 800MHz and 2.6GHz bands they’d be operating, increasing the total raised by the auction from £2.341 billion to £2.368 billion. No, those figures aren’t the week’s most exciting news but at least it means the winners can all start rolling out 4G coverage across the UK!

Every Monday morning we summarise the past week’s mobile industry headlines in a newsletter that’s very much like this article. To receive it, simply register your email address at TheFonecast.com by clicking the link at the top right-hand corner of our home page.

Missed our podcast report from Barcelona?  Listen on our website audio player, download the mp3 file or find us on iTunes.
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Recent Podcasts

Trends, tablets and training with Faisal Sheikh from Fone Doctors

Podcast - 22nd June 2012

Iain Graham visits Faisal Sheikh of London-based Fone Doctors in today's audio feature.

They talk about the recent Fone Doctors relocation to new offices near London Bridge and Faisal's plans for a franchise outlet at Liverpool Street station before moving on to discuss training, customer service, the rise of the tablet and the demise of customer service.

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Microsoft makes tablets while Nokia makes cuts

Podcast - 20th June 2012

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Apple previews iOS6, Vodafone goes roaming and Xbox gets mobile

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There's also talk about network sharing, legal battles, mobile apps, mobile payments and mobile retailing.

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Over The Air 2012

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James Rosewell reports from Over The Air 2012 in today's podcast.

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Author: The Fonecast
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Podcast - 6th June 2012

We're taking a break from the current mobile industry news headlines this Diamond Jubilee week. In fact, we're celebrating our own anniversary because it's six years since we first started recording The Fonecast.

Listen to this week's podcast and we'll take you back to 2006, a year in which 'mobile music' meant ringtones, the Nokia N95 redefined 'smart' and we reported rumours of a new Apple 'iPod phone' being prepared by Foxconn.

Author: The Fonecast
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