Leaving your wallet at home and going shopping with nothing more than your mobile phone is still a science-fiction vision of the future.

But it's getting much closer to reality, thanks to a UK-based company called Corethree. They're currently working with a number of public transport operators and have brought mobile tickets to a wide range of smartphones.

This week's podcast begins with the latest news from Phones 4u, where hundreds of jobs have been saved but there are a large number of redundancies as well.

Iain, James and Mark then talk about new products from Amazon, BlackBerry and Panasonic, mobile payment innovation from Indonesia and the UK, the acquisition of IoT specialist Neul and Apple's updated privacy policy.

Mobile ticketing business Corethree has arranged a partnership with carrier billing specialist Boku.

It means consumers will be able to charge bus tickets to their mobile phone account when they buy them via a Corethree application.

Mobile ticketing specialist Corethree has introduced an m-ticketing solution for Edinburgh’s new trams.

Passengers can use their smartphones to choose, buy and download tickets before catching a tram.

Customers on Brighton & Hove buses can now use a mobile phone app instead of cash when they want to buy a ticket, although the option is currently only available on a few services and with certain ticket types.

Watford-based Corethree has provided the mobile ticketing platform.

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?

In this week's edition of The Fonecast we're taking a look back at 2006... and seeing quite a few similarities with 2008. There's also our usual review of industry headlines - plus there's a preview of the tough new Sonim XP3.

The Fonecast takes its usual irreverent look at the week's mobile news headlines. There's also a discussion about how the credit crunch is affecting the mobile industry and a preview of the INQ1 'Facebook phone'.

This week Iain Graham from The Fonecast talks to Faisal Sheikh of 'Fone Doctors' about the current state of retailing. There's a preview of the Sony Ericsson W705 Walkman and the team's usual off-beat look at industry headlines from the last seven days.

In this week's edition of The Fonecast, we talk to T-Mobile's John Fannon about dealer commission payments. There's also a preview of the Samsung M8800 Pixon and a look at mobile industry headlines from the last seven days.

In this week's edition of The Fonecast, Iain Graham talks to Ben Whitaker from Masabi about mobile payments and mobile tickets. Mark Bridge and James Rosewell join in with the latest mobile industry headlines - plus there's a preview of the Motorola Aura.