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:

Another week, another couple of product announcements from Samsung. There appears to be no stopping them, despite a recent drop in the company’s share price.

This time it’s a couple of tablets – one of which runs both Android and Windows 8 – and a 20 megapixel camera that’s got a 4G-enabled Android device built in.

Mark Bridge writes:

The telecommunications industry was making plenty of headlines last week – but much of it wasn’t particularly upbeat.

The debate about privacy and security continued in the wake of allegations about US agents intercepting internet traffic. Meanwhile, Nokia prepared to make its last Symbian smartphones and Tradedoubler warned that mobile devices were having a negative effect on high-street consumer loyalty.

George Putic of voanews.com writes:

When news broke about U.S. government agencies collecting metadata about its citizens’ Internet and phone communications, many were surprised by its scope. The surveillance covered a vast number of Internet messages and phone calls. The government did not deny the action but pointed out that the collected data contained, not the substance of the communication, but the so-called metadata.

Mark Bridge writes:

There’s been a lot of talk recently about PRISM, which may allow the US National Security Agency - and anyone they choose - to access some of our personal online information if it passes through the USA. It’s unclear exactly what (if anything) is being shared with whom… and given the nature of national security, we may never know.

However, alongside the possibility of governments seeing information we thought was secure, it’s also worth pointing out that we choose to share plenty of online information ourselves.

Mark Bridge writes:

Where did it all go wrong?  When did the mainstream mobile industry start to slide away from innovation and into repetitive nonsense?  For a while I suspected the downloadable ringtone was to blame. Just days after hearing 'Barbie Girl' on the mobile phone of a man from Vodafone Value Added Services in the late 1990s, I'd downloaded a poptastic tune to my own Nokia 2110. Soon, the entire mobile world was focussed on 30-second instrumentals instead of technical innovation. It was the beginning of the end.

Leaving your wallet at home and going shopping with nothing more than your mobile phone is still a science-fiction vision of the future.

But it's getting much closer to reality, thanks to a UK-based company called Corethree. They're currently working with a number of public transport operators and have brought mobile tickets to a wide range of smartphones.

In this week's podcast we talk about two of the big announcements from Google I/O: a new version of Android and the retail launch of smartwatches powered by 'Android Wear'.

We also talk about Android-based smartphones from Nokia and Blackphone, network complaints in the UK, a reduction in European roaming charges and mobile ticketing.

We have something for everyone in this week's podcast. There's bad news as Samba Mobile closes, bad news as Apple and Samsung suffer product faults... and bad news as wearable devices are criticised for the poor user experience they offer.

Yet there's plenty of good news as well, including the launch of a new UK mobile payment service.

Samsung has put a 10x optical zoom lens on a smartphone, Google is acquiring navigation app Waze and the European Commission is getting ready to equip cars with an emergency call system.

We're also talking about a strike threat at O2, the risk of 'showrooming' to high-street retailers, the end of Symbian smartphones and plenty more as well.

In this week's podcast news report we're talking about quarterly results from BlackBerry and Three UK, we're discussing the latest network complaints data from Ofcom and we're contemplating the arrival of a new Facebook phone.

There's also time to discuss EE's UK 4G rollout, a dramatic move from T-Mobile USA and a train ticket app from O2.