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

Ah, the joys of multiplying by zero. I was reminded of my school maths lessons when I saw a news release from Orange UK this week.

Steve Wallage, Head of Sport Partnerships and Services for Orange UK was quoted as saying “Based on the surge in demand for mobile TV during the Ashes last summer, we expect viewing figures could rocket by at least 74% during the World Cup”.

Mark Bridge writes:

I loved the film WarGames. I saw it in the cinema when it came out… and developed a minor crush on Ally Sheedy as a result. If you don’t remember the film – or haven’t seen it – the plot centres on a young computer hacker who almost starts World War III while playing an illicit online game of Global Thermonuclear War with a military computer.

Mark Bridge writes:

It’s time to take sides. Are you with Apple… or are you against them?  Sorry, sitting on the fence is no longer acceptable. Not sure?  Okay, try this one for size. Are you with Google… or are you against them?  Still undecided?

Right – here’s your third choice. Are you with the Rebel Alliance? 

Mark Bridge writes:

It's not often that a news story about the Apple iPhone prompts me to remember a bible verse... but this week was an exception.

The story was in The Washington Post and it was headlined 'Apple's iPhone does well without being the best'. “Very true,” I thought, as I remembered something similar I'd written last summer.

Mark Bridge writes:

Welcome to the Carnival of the Mobilists #224. If you’re a regular visitor to The Fonecast and have no idea what the Carnival is, this is a summary of the week’s best blogging about all things mobile. It travels the internet, alighting at a different mobile-related website every week.

Mark Bridge learns about the mobile technology trends at Mobile World Congress 2015 by chatting to James Rosewell of 51Degrees, Dr Kevin Curran from the IEEE and Chris Millington of Doro.

They talk about wearable devices, wireless charging, mobile operating systems and much more... including some of their favourite products from the exhibition.

We start this week's podcast with news that EE now has the largest 4G customer base in Europe, with 5.6 million UK connections.

There's also talk about a new DIY product for the Internet of Things, the disappearance of Nokia branded smartphones, quarterly results for Apple, increasing M2M connections and a growing market for smartwatches.

This week's podcast begins with news about the new 'quad play' television service offered in the UK by EE.

We also talk about HTC's new camera, an ethical smartphone, a complaint from Ofcom, mobile payments, machine-to-machine connections and yet another online security breach.

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.

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.