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.

Amir Lehr of Cellebrite writes:

Mobile phone faults pose a daily problem for mobile phone retailers. According to mobile diagnostics expert Cellebrite, 60 per cent of cases are software-related issues with the smartphone, and can be resolved within minutes.

Mark Bridge writes:

Last week a major retailer with a significant online presence announced plans to release its own-brand smartphone by the end of the year. No, not Amazon. This news came from Tesco.

Lawrence Lundy of Frost & Sullivan writes:

While the Galaxy S5 is an evolutionary product, there is not enough in there to make people upgrade from the 4. It doesn't push the envelope in any real way; we are in a sort of stasis now when it comes to smartphone innovation.

Jürgen Hase of Deutsche Telekom writes:

The Smart City is on its way. All over the world more and more cities are connecting all areas of their infrastructure. Pisa in Tuscany, for example, aims to improve its traffic management with a machine-to-machine (M2M) solution and a Big Data service provided by Deutsche Telekom.

Mark Bridge writes:

“Hey, everybody, we’re releasing a new flagship smartphone that carries all the hopes of the company with it. If this sells well, we could be saved. If not, it could be disaster.”

“Great. What shall we call our new phone?”

“Oh, we’ll give it the same name as the previous model. That’ll be fine.”

In this week's podcast we're talking about the potential purchase of the O2 UK mobile network by BT.

We also discuss new tablets from Nokia and Jolla, the end of a patent battle, mobile payments via instant messaging, app development for the Apple Watch and plans to make even more spectrum available for mobile broadband in the UK .

This week's headline-grabbing product launch is the Motorola Moto G, which promises a decent Android smartphone at a very attractive price.

We also discuss new rules about mobile phones on planes, a new campaign to ban hands-free calls in cars, falling SMS revenue, mobile wallets and BlackBerry's $1 million investment.