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.

Qualcomm, best known for its chip production, has created a subsidiary business that'll focus on mobile technology. Qualcomm Services Labs will "explore new ideas, technologies and service models that can have an immediate impact in the marketplace" by looking at five main areas: communication, information/entertainment, discovery, life automation and 'digital to physical'.

Motorola has recently acquired software developer 280 North, although neither organisation appears to be saying much at the moment. 280 North describes itself as “dedicated to advancing the state of the art on the web”; it’s created a browser-based presentation application called 280 Slides and has also released its app-building framework Cappuccino as an open source project.

Cellmania, which described itself as “the leading provider of wireless search, provisioning and billing solutions to wireless operators”, has been bought by Research In Motion.

It appears likely that Cellmania’s expertise will be used for BlackBerry App World, the RIM application store.

In this week's edition of The Fonecast we take our regular look at mobile industry news from the last seven days, including two Ofcom stories, two Intel stories, two network problems, three sets of financial results and nine arrests.

Samsung has revealed details of its forthcoming tablet computer in an online video. The Samsung Galaxy Tab will apparently have a 7-inch screen, a built-in camera that supports video calling and will run Android 2.2. It's expected to offer HD movie playback and, like the Galaxy S smartphone, will include Swype software for text entry. A formal launch is expected at the IFA consumer electronics show in Berlin on 2nd September.

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.