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.

Mobile phone cases are often seen as unsophisticated and low-tech... but that's not always the case. In this podcast, Rhona Cashman from OtterBox explains why there can be much more to a mobile phone case than meets the eye.

We're covering another batch of quarterly results in this week’s podcast - and we're also looking at what this has done to smartphone market share - before moving on to the rest of the mobile industry headlines.

Colin Aitken, MD of UK-based Burnside Telecom, talks about his company's desktop-style mobile phones and fixed cellular terminals. We also discuss Burnside's relationship with network operators - and its plans for the future.

This week we start with contrasting quarterly results from Apple and Nokia before talking about Google Labs, a new London taxi app, gesture recognition technology, mobile payments and some customer service research.

We chat to Sedgrid Lewis, CEO of Spy Parent; a US-based company that recently launched an anti-bullying application for mobile phones. Sedgrid talks about his 'Bully Block' app and explains how mobile networks should protect younger customers from cyberbullying.