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.

UK telecoms regulator Ofcom has agreed to make radio spectrum available for transport operators to offer faster broadband connections to passengers on aircraft, boats, railway trains and coaches.

Each vehicle could receive a data connection of around 50Mbit/sec, providing more than 10Mbps via WiFi to an individual passenger.

This week's podcast starts with talk about money, as Google buys smart thermostat company Nest Labs while O2 UK closes its mobile Wallet product.

We're also looking at the decline of SMS text messaging in the UK, the end of the Cash4phones recycling business, an alleged security breach that wasn't what it seemed, mobile service on the Channel tunnel and the growth of 4G.

Mark Bridge writes:

Farewell for another year, dear old International CES. The Las Vegas-based consumer electronics show is but a fading memory as the mobile industry starts preparing for next month’s GSMA Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.

However, what happened in Vegas doesn’t stay in Vegas.

Eurotunnel has signed a 10-year agreement with EE and Vodafone that’ll make mobile phone services available to Eurostar and Le Shuttle passengers travelling from the UK to France.

A similar deal came into operation last year with French networks providing mobile coverage in the ‘South Tunnel’ that carries travellers from France to the UK.

Mark Bridge writes:

A few months ago I was at the launch of DataWind’s UbiSurfer netbook, a device that includes 12 months of internet access with the surprisingly low purchase price. A light-hearted presentation compared the UbiSurfer's web access with the Apple iPhone’s “there’s an app for that” TV campaign – and reminded us that many popular web-based iPhone apps cost money whilst web pages were free to access. Pay for a currency converter – or access one online for nothing. Pay for a train timetable application – or go to the mobile web for free.

Commonsense may send consumers straight to the web… but convenience and marketing has still sent plenty to the Apple App Store, which celebrated two billion downloads recently. I didn’t think much more about this until I saw a report in Newsweek earlier this month.

James Rosewell writes:

Whilst the mainstream press were busy covering the marketing launch of Windows Mobile 6.5 or 'Windows Phone' as it’ll now be known, I spent some time with the geeks looking under the hood at Microsoft’s new desktop (Windows 7) and server (Server 2008 R2) operating systems. The event was packed full of IT professionals whose jobs and careers are heavily involved with Microsoft. They were there to learn about the latest products ready for deploying them within their organisations. These are the people that keep e-mail systems working, decide what applications you’ll be using at work, choose the technology that companies use on the web and increasingly steer corporate mobile strategy.

So what mobile phones were these people using?

Mark Bridge writes:

Last week in one of my opinion pieces I had a bit of a go at a mobile phone price comparison website. I'd only just forgiven them when I saw another survey from another mobile phone price comparison website. This one said shopping for a mobile phone at a price comparison website could be up to 40% cheaper than visiting the high street. And then I took a closer look...

Mark Bridge writes:

With over 100,000 people having signed its petition in four months, there’s no denying that the Terminate The Rate campaign is attracting supporters. And with promises including “BT and 3 are working together on a petition that will lower your phone bill by reducing the level of Mobile Termination Rates”, it’s easy to see why.

But what’s the point of all the campaigning - and has it really achieved anything?  Terminate The Rate says mobile networks charge a Mobile Termination Rate of around 4.7p per minute for connecting a call to another network. That’s a lot of money over the course of a year. But those networks also pay that 4.7p when calls are connected to them, which cancels out a fair bit of it.

Mark Bridge writes:

Earlier this week Vodafone announced Vodafone 360 under the headline “Bringing your world together”. It all sounds very promising – and it reminded me of another Vodafone launch nine years before. It was September 2000 when Vizzavi appeared in the UK...

Iain Graham, James Rosewell and Mark Bridge return to review their mobile industry predictions from last year. Which mergers, partnerships and developments did they forecast correctly... and which didn’t work out as planned?

Later in the programme, the team anticipates some of the topics that will be hitting the headlines during 2016.

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're taking a look back at the biggest mobile industry news stories from February 2015, including allegations that the UK's security service tried to breach SIM card security by hacking into one of the world's biggest SIM producers.

We also talk about the planned BT and EE merger, the creation of two new UK virtual networks, some acquisitions in the mobile payment arena and a new Ubuntu smartphone.

In today's programme Mark Bridge talks to Chris Millington, who's Managing Director for Doro UK and Ireland.

They discuss the state of mobile retailing in the UK, the future of wearable devices and - as you might expect - smartphones for seniors.

We're back with a month of mobile industry news, including takeover talks and takeover rumours. O2 and Three are said to be discussing a merger... but is there any truth in the suggestions that BlackBerry could be up for grabs?

We also discuss Apple's record-breaking quarterly figures, the highlights of CES and the launch of Microsoft Windows 10, as well as saying farewell to the current version of Google Glass.