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.

Mark Bridge writes:

Every week we produce a half-hour podcast that covers all the biggest news headlines for the UK mobile phone industry.

Thanks to a special offer from Scribie.com, we can also offer a transcription of last week’s programme.

VOA News writes:

New market research has many technology experts thinking the era of the personal computer (PC) is coming to an end as consumers worldwide begin to embrace tablet computers and smartphones.

As Cortado reveals a new HTML5 client for accessing cloud-based files, Mark Bridge talks to Cortado CEO Carsten Mickeleit about wireless printing and accessing the 'cloud desktop' on mobile devices.

With Iain away this week, Mark and James discuss the week's mobile industry news - from Nokia's new Windows Phone handsets to Samsung's success and a multi-million pound investment in mobile money.

Two years ago, we reported the launch of ipadio.com - a company that let you broadcast online simply by making a phone call. In this report we catch up with ipadio CEO Mark Smith and talk about the company's growth, its success and its plans.

Much of this week's mobile industry news is about new smartphones and new operating systems - but we still find time to talk about patents, payments and plenty more.

We talk to Howard Berg and Naomi Lurie of Gemalto about financial services on mobile phones, covering everything from security concerns to mobile banking and contactless payments.