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.

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.

The past few days have been a good time for launches. Twitter has floated on the stock exchange, Kazam has revealed its smartphone range and EE has created a tariff with a million gigabytes of mobile data.

On the other side of the coin, Acer's CEO is quitting, Vodafone UK has missed its 3G coverage target and hackers can take control of your handset's camera to ascertain PIN codes.

In today's podcast: Samsung's profit, UK mobile ad spending and Vertu's smartphone range are all increasing.

Meanwhile HTC's profit and the proportion of children with mobile phones are both going down. Discover the background to these news stories - and plenty more - in our regular weekly broadcast.

Today's podcast starts with a gentle warning to app developers from the Office of Fair Trading.

We then move on to Amazon's new tablets, HTC's sale of its Beats Electronics stake, Twitter's emergency alerts, UK government plans to improve mobile broadband on trains, customer complaints and the growth in adult content for mobile devices.

We start this week's show with news about the European Commission's plans to end mobile roaming charges completely from next year.

We're also talking about the future facing Twitter and Dell, Vodafone's security challenges in Germany, app development, wireless charging, mobile payments and Nokia's Android-based smartphones.