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:

The coolest person in the country admires the French president's wife and lives in East London. Oh, and they use a BlackBerry by day but an iPhone by night. That's what recent surveys say. Nonsense, isn’t it?

Mark Bridge writes:

The end of civilisation. The dawn of the future. Mobile phones are somewhere in the middle. Once seen as novelties for people with too much money, the mobile phone is now ubiquitous. And with that ubiquity comes an acceptance that they’re just tools. Doesn't it?

Which is why I was surprised to see a news article from Voice, a trade union that wants mobile phones banned from nurseries because of concern about inappropriate photographs.

Mark Bridge writes:

"Sounding good to me". So sang Charlie Dore, back in the day when radio stations started to realise that quality was as important as quantity. "AM, FM, I feel so ecstatic", opined Cliff Richard, although I’m betting he’d have preferred the lack of hiss and crackle on FM stations.

Yet no-one’s really thought much about the quality of a phone call. Until now.

Mark Bridge writes:

In last weekend’s Sunday Times, Ali Hussain asked "Is this the end for the landline phone?"

He pointed out that the average mobile bill almost halved between 2003 and 2008, while landline bills fell by less than a fifth – which has meant the average mobile bill is now lower than the average landline bill. He went on to list fibre-optic broadband, mobile broadband, mobile calls, VoIP calls and satellite phones as alternatives to using fixed-line phones.

Art Chimes of voanews.com writes:

Nearly two-thirds of the people on Earth now use mobile telephones, according to a study by the International Telecommunications Union. But how safe are those phones? Scientists still aren't sure, but some evidence is starting to suggest there may be danger along with the convenience.

The new Apple iPad tablets, Google's latest Nexus devices, Android Lollipop, wearable tech from will.i.am and the world's slimmest smartphone all feature in this week's podcast.

We're also talking about free mobile data for Christmas, 4.5G technology being rolled out in the UK, 5G technology being tested in South Korea, the end of an era for webOS and video messages that self-destruct.

In this interview Mark Bridge talks to Jijesh Devan of QuickPlay Media about the opportunities and challenges of bringing video services to smartphones and other internet-connected devices.

Their conversation took place on the QuickPlay stand inside the App Planet area of Mobile World Congress in February.

Dr Kevin Curran, Reader in Computer Science at the University of Ulster, joined us during Mobile World Congress to offer his well-informed opinion about trends in mobile technology.

We talked about a wide range of topics, including battery life, disposable tablets, wearables, m-health, 4G fragmentation, connected furniture, M2M security, the rise of video and the IEEE.

This week's podcast starts with the world's slimmest smartphone (at least for the moment) before introducing a new smartphone company and even more new products from Samsung.

We're also talking about the battle of Instagram vs Vine, the sale of O2 Ireland, mobile retail web usage, the new CEO of BT and a new report about an unexpected health threat to mobile phone users.

Hans Eriksson, Executive Chairman of mobile video streaming service Bambuser, is in London for a 24-hour non-stop mobile video broadcast. Mark Bridge talks to him as he prepares to test his company's technology - and test the power of social networking, too.