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.

Mark Bridge writes:

Talk about a difference. In preliminary results last week, HTC announced its first-ever quarterly loss while Samsung revealed record quarterly profits.

Curiously, many of the week’s other news stories also had a companion headline to provide a contrast.

Mark Bridge writes:

This story starts with Mercury One2One and Orange. They were acquired by Deutsche Telekom (which changed One2One’s name to T-Mobile) and France Telecom. Next, Everything Everywhere was created to run the T-Mobile and Orange brands in the UK.

Mark Bridge writes:

The really big news last week wasn’t good: 17,000 jobs worldwide are being lost at Nokia Siemens Networks (which, incidentally, is a separate company from both Nokia and Siemens). That’s not far short of a quarter of the total workforce. The company is going to focus on mobile network infrastructure and services, with a particular emphasis on mobile broadband, and is likely to sell off other parts of the business.

Mark Bridge writes:

I like hotels. Free biscuits in your room and all the portions of UHT milk you can drink. But the phone calls... that's a different story.

Dearie me, you're paying for that hospitality tray when you pick up the phone.

Iain Graham writes:

Woe is me!  I recently did a foolish thing, I tried (and unfortunately succeeded in) changing my home broadband supplier!  Let me begin at the beginning...

John Barton discusses LG's recent successes - including last week's Mobile News Awards wins - and talks about its current UK activities. Plus, as usual, the team takes a look at the latest activity in the UK mobile phone industry.

This week on The Fonecast there's news about the Apple iPhone 3.0 update and all the other mobile industry headlines from the last seven days. In addition we talk to Chris Caudle from the IMPDA about the ways that high-street dealers are coping with the current economic situation.

The Fonecast takes its regular weekly look at the latest mobile news headlines, including a new technology partnership between Barclaycard and Orange. There's also an introduction to the relatively recent phenomenon of 'App Stores'.

This week's edition of The Fonecast talks about mobile phone recycling with Chris Rogerson from ShP Limited - the company behind Mopay. And, as usual, there's our look at industry headlines from the last seven days.

In The Fonecast this week there's an in-depth look at the new Emporio Armani phone produced by Samsung. We also talk about the latest mobile industry headlines, from Vodafone redundancies to mobile viruses.