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:

Internet veteran Yahoo! provided last week’s biggest news, at least in terms of press coverage. It appointed Marissa Mayer as its President and Chief Executive Officer, having enticed her away from Google after 13 years.

Mark Bridge writes:

As summer approaches, so the media’s interest in mobile phone roaming increases. Once again, the maximum price of calls and texts when abroad in Europe is falling – but this year there’s something different on the horizon. The European parliament has just approved the EU’s plans to introduce a price cap for mobile data... and in a couple of years’ time we’ll be able to choose a completely separate network to help cut roaming costs.

Mark Bridge writes:

I’m reminded of a sketch from BBC TV’s ‘The Young Ones’ in 1982. The four horsemen of the apocalypse are waiting around.

“What’s new?”, asks Pestilence. “Microchip technology”, replies one of the others. “That’s quite a new thing, isn’t it?”

Quite new. It’s probably the best description for much of last week’s mobile industry news.

Mark Bridge writes:

Welcome to this week's news summary from The Fonecast. Sorry it's late but I have a reasonably good excuse. On Friday I was in central London to meet Hans Eriksson of Bambuser. He was about to stream his life online for 24 hours, relying on social networking to find him off-beat attractions. You'll find our conversation on TheFonecast.com – and the results are at bambuserchallenge.tumblr.com

Mark Bridge writes:

I've written previously about the changes happening to mobile application stores. Last week I was talking to Todd Levy about the family-friendly application store he's planning to launch. He explained how BloomWorlds would be curated to provide trusted reviews that weren't skewed by the app developers themselves.

This week's podcast includes an interview with Clive Bayley of Fonehouse, a review of the Nokia 6120 classic and a discussion about the week's mobile industry headlines.

This week we talk to Chris Tombs from Timico, look at the Samsung F210 music-playing phone, ask Sunny Dehiri from Sunalysis about telecoms recruitment and review the week's mobile news headlines.

The Mobile News podcast team discusses the latest Google 'gPhone' rumours, looks at the new Mandarina Duck handset and talks about the week's industry news headlines.

This week the team discuss Nokia's mapping purchase, review the Sony Ericsson K850i and bring you all the latest mobile related news and views.

The team take a look at the news headlines including the first advertising funded mobile service from Blyk and all the latest iPhone & gPhone rumours. Plus a review of the HTC Touch using Windows Mobile 6.