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.

Jon Carter of Deutsche Telekom has provided us with his ‘Connected Home’ predictions for 2015:

Connected home products and services rely on different communication standards, be it ZigBee, HomeMatic or Z-Wave. Only platforms which both handle established standards and are able to learn new protocols will hold their ground in the market in 2015. Customers don’t want to be limited in their product choices or care about compatibility issues. Integrating any device into a connected home setup needs to be smooth and simple.

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.

Jürgen Hase of Deutsche Telekom writes:

The Smart City is on its way. All over the world more and more cities are connecting all areas of their infrastructure. Pisa in Tuscany, for example, aims to improve its traffic management with a machine-to-machine (M2M) solution and a Big Data service provided by Deutsche Telekom.

Mark Bridge writes:

As one show closes, so another show opens.

It’s now more than a week since we bid a sad farewell to Mobile World Congress 2014 – I imagine hotel rooms for 2nd to 5th March 2015 are already being booked – but there’s now CeBIT in Germany to look forward to. Prime Minister David Cameron kicked things off last night with a speech that talked about UK-German partnerships, more funding for research around the ‘Internet of Things’ and the development of 5G technology.

The GSMA reported that 85,000 visitors attended Mobile World Congress this year, breaking all previous records for the show.

Andrew Skinner, Relationship Director of the Technology, Media & Telecoms team at Barclays, reflects on his time in Barcelona and some of the key themes to come out of this year’s show.

We start this week's podcast with Tesco's plans for a Hudl-branded smartphone. Next comes some potentially good news about the 'patent wars' affecting the mobile industry - although there's certainly no sign of a ceasefire.

Later we discuss an announcement from Facebook about its mobile advertising scheme, an unfortunate mistake for O2's Travel service, a new 20 megapixel camera-phone and an automotive investment by Nokia.

In this interview Mark Bridge talks to Jijesh Devan of QuickPlay Media about the opportunities and challenges of bringing video services to smartphones and other internet-connected devices.

Their conversation took place on the QuickPlay stand inside the App Planet area of Mobile World Congress in February.

We have something for everyone in this week's podcast. There's bad news as Samba Mobile closes, bad news as Apple and Samsung suffer product faults... and bad news as wearable devices are criticised for the poor user experience they offer.

Yet there's plenty of good news as well, including the launch of a new UK mobile payment service.

Telefonica sets up its own mobile advertising business, Mozilla puts an interim CEO in place and Nokia suspends sales of its flagship Windows 8.1 RT tablet: all topics for discussion in this week's podcast.

We're also talking about the future growth of Orange Money, EE's online activity, mobile broadband growth and the Loch Ness monster being spotted on Apple iPhones.

When the topics of mobile technology and security are discussed, the conversation can end up focussing on third-party software solutions.

Inside Secure has a different perspective. It's a specialist in embedded security; building protection in from the start. To learn more, Mark Bridge caught up with Loic Hamon, Vice President of Corporate Development at Inside Secure, at the company's hospitality suite during Mobile World Congress.