Last week, Orange UK closed its online shop, online customer service and online account management, moving them all to the EE web site.

You might say the future is starting to look less bright for the Orange brand in the UK.

Tom Alexander, who co-founded Virgin Mobile in 1999 and was CEO at Everything Everywhere until 2011, has returned to the mobile industry as non-executive chairman of Viacloud UK.

He’ll be working with a recently-appointed management team that includes CEO Emanuele Angelidis, Chief Commercial Officer Tim Stone, Chief Technology Officer Jon Kandiah and Chief Financial Officer Richard Schaefer.

Quarterly results from EE show that 318,000 customers (2.3% of EE’s post-paid customer base) have signed up for the network’s 4G service in the first five months.

It says this means it’s on track to have more than one million 4G customers by the end of 2013.

EE says it’s going to double the speed and the capacity of its 4G network in the UK. As a result, maximum data speeds are expected to exceed 80Mbps with an average of more than 20Mbps.

In addition, EE is dedicating more of its 1800MHz spectrum to 4G service.

A promotional deal with EE has seen 40 black cabs in London and 10 in Birmingham turned into mobile WiFi hotspots. Each taxi has been given its own 4G data connection via a MiFi wireless router.

The promotional 4GEE campaign will run for three months.

Mark Windle, head of marketing at OpenCloud, predicts that this year’s reduction in the number of traditional telecoms operators in some countries will provide an opportunity for other operators to innovate and capture market share in 2016.

He says next year will be a year of rapid change for telecoms… whether it’s MVNO disruption, competitive tariff pricing or simply defence from the ‘dark art’ of hacking.

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?

We have a varied collection of mobile industry news stories in this week's podcast, including new rules affecting airline passengers with smartphones.

We also talk about BlackBerry giving up its European research centre, Vodafone installing fibre-optic broadband, Samsung's profits, spending on mobile advertising, M2M adoption and WiFi on trains.

In this week's podcast we talk about two of the big announcements from Google I/O: a new version of Android and the retail launch of smartwatches powered by 'Android Wear'.

We also talk about Android-based smartphones from Nokia and Blackphone, network complaints in the UK, a reduction in European roaming charges and mobile ticketing.

This week's podcast covers the launch of the first Amazon smartphone and the introduction of Google Glass to the UK.

We also talk about new WiFi-powered voice services from EE and Three, plans to reduce mobile 'black spots', BlackBerry's app partnership, smartphone theft, 4G innovation... and rechargeable trousers.

We open this week's podcast with news about the European Commission and South Korea working together on 5G mobile technology.

There's a quick look at Samsung's new tablet, some acquisition deals to talk about, a tax investigation, research into wearable devices and plenty of other mobile industry news as well.

This week's podcast begins with Ofcom's plans to cut the wholesale cost of inter-network mobile phone calls. But what benefit will consumers see?

Iain, James and Mark then move on to discuss luxury smartphones, a new handset on the high street, mobile broadband for aircraft passengers, government monitoring, the growth of smartphones - and 4G-equipped donkeys.