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.

Ralf-Gordon Jahns of research2guidance writes:

The ever increasing demand for access to company data on the go has compelled companies to address the complexity of application deployment, device management, security management and user support. These factors will lead mobile device policy setting to become one of the most important decisions for IT departments.

Mark Bridge writes:

If I’m paying for internet access - whether the arrangement is with a broadband service provider for my home or a mobile network operator on my smartphone - I want to be able to use that access however I want. That’s pretty much what net neutrality is all about.

But the debate isn’t necessarily as straightforward as it sounds. To learn more, I spoke to Doug Suriano, Chief Technology Officer at mobile broadband solutions company Tekelec.

Elizabeth Lee of voanews.com writes:

Smart phones and tablet computers have become so popular that they are now a part of everyday life for many people around the world. These devices have also prompted an explosion of mobile applications. Hollywood is plugging in to this potentially profitable world of new technology.

Mark Bridge writes:

By now, everyone who's anyone has offered an online 'unboxing' of their Asus Google Nexus 7. And if they haven't, there's probably a review on the way.

I'm very happy with mine. But there was one particular usage scenario I was curious about. How would it function as an audio recorder?

Mark Bridge writes:

Internet veteran Yahoo! provided last week’s biggest news, at least in terms of press coverage. It appointed Marissa Mayer as its President and Chief Executive Officer, having enticed her away from Google after 13 years.

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.

This week's podcast begins with the latest news from Phones 4u, where hundreds of jobs have been saved but there are a large number of redundancies as well.

Iain, James and Mark then talk about new products from Amazon, BlackBerry and Panasonic, mobile payment innovation from Indonesia and the UK, the acquisition of IoT specialist Neul and Apple's updated privacy policy.

Producing mobile phones for older customers requires much more than big buttons and a simple interface. At Mobile World Congress last month we spoke to two major players in this growing sector: Swedish company Doro and Austria's Emporia Telecom.

Our first conversation was with Harald Obereder, Chief Technology Officer at Emporia, who spoke to Mark Bridge about handset design and user interface design. This was followed by an interview with Chris Millington, Managing Director for Doro UK and Ireland, about research and development in the 'senior tech' market.

James Rosewell interviews Ruth Barnett, head of communications at British-based technology company SwiftKey.

As well as talking about the SwiftKey keyboard app they also discuss competition in the mobile application space, working with manufacturers and the opportunities presented by 'Bring Your Own Device' schemes.

This panel discussion about new mobile operating systems was recorded at Mobile Monday London on 15th July 2013.

It's chaired by Geoff Blaber of CCS Insight with contributions from the GSMA's Alex Sinclair, David Wood of Delta Wisdom (and formerly of Symbian), Andreas Constantinou from Vision Mobile, Victor Palau of Canonical and Christian Heilmann from Mozilla Corporation.