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 latest version of Greenpeace’s Guide to Greener Electronics sees Nokia and Sony Ericsson remaining in first and second place. The guide ranks the 18 top manufacturers of personal computers, mobile phones, TVs and games consoles according to their policies on toxic chemicals, recycling and climate change. Nokia is commended for supporting a 30% cut in greenhouse gas emissions and for phasing out certain toxic chemicals in new models, while Sony Ericsson is noted as being the best performer on the toxic chemicals criteria of all the ranked brands.

This week's edition of The Fonecast is now online, taking its usual look at the week's mobile news headlines... from the Nokia/Yahoo! partnership and Google's AdMob approval... to the annoyance of one-sided mobile phone calls.

In addition there's an interview with Andrew Grieve and Paul Erickson from fSONA; a company that uses licence-free 'optical wireless' technology to relieve network capacity problems without the need for cables or microwave radio links.

The Apple iPad will have a rival in O2 and The Carphone Warehouse shops within days of arriving in the UK. O2 and Dell have done an exclusive deal that'll see the Dell Streak Android-powered tablet available through O2 UK from early next month.

The Dell Streak runs the Android operating system and has a 5-inch touchscreen, 5 megapixel auto-focus camera, expandable memory, built-in WiFi and a 1GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon processor. Pricing and tariff information hasn't been confirmed yet.

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.