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.

The US Library of Congress, which reviews copyright law every three years, has confirmed that smartphone owners can 'jailbreak' their handsets and install software that hasn't been approved by the manufacturer.

For example, iPhone owners can unlock their phones and install software that's not been obtained from the Apple App Store.

There'll be no more mobile phones made exclusively for the Vodafone 360 service.

The network revealed two exclusive phones when the service was launched in September last year – the Samsung-produced H1 and M1 – but no more will be made. Instead, the network will focus on the service itself.

WAUSAU Financial Systems and Mitek Systems – two US-based companies - have introduced a system to let banks accept cheques that are 'paid in' as a photo taken on a mobile phone.

The new service combines the payment processing experience of WAUSAU with document capture technology from Mitek.

eBay has acquired the RedLaser barcode-scanning application, which lets iPhone users identify products and find online information – including prices - simply by scanning the product barcode.

RedLaser was previously a chargeable app. It's now been turned into a free application, which is likely to see a dramatic increase in the number of downloads. The paid version had been downloaded over two million times.

The final news story in this week's edition of The Fonecast was about the use of mobile video streaming service Bambuser to cover Jukka Mutanen's 1000 kilometre cross-country drive through Finland on a small excavator. This entire journey is being streamed live on Jukka's Bambuser page.

We spoke to Bambuser CEO Hans Eriksson about his company, about its technology and about Jukka's trip. There was only time for a couple of minutes of our conversation in Wednesday's podcast so we've now created a special broadcast that includes the entire chat.

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.