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.”

We start this week's podcast by talking about the launch of BlackBerry 10 before moving on to discuss a 4G promise from Three UK.

The numerical theme continues with the Microsoft 4Afrika project, a handful of quarterly results and some investment news. Plus there’s worrying new malware and a curious Apple trademark application.

The last of the 2012 quarterly results are coming in, so it's time to compare figures from the biggest mobile handset manufacturers.

We're also looking at Twitter's new video app, discussing the forthcoming Firefox OS and preparing for the BlackBerry 10 launch later today.

We have a particularly packed programme this week as we catch up with all the biggest mobile industry news stories since Christmas.

There's opinion on everything from the UK 4G auction to the current CES show and from open-source smartphones to wireless phone charging in cars.

In this week's podcast we find BlackBerry facing a legal battle, SMS spammers suffering a big fine and EE boosting its 4G data tariffs.

We're also talking about a new iPhone camera accessory from musician will.i.am, rich cross-network communications in Spain, free WiFi in Yorkshire and the year's most-popular mobile search terms.

The UK's 4G spectrum auctions are given a start date, while RIM reveals the launch day for its BlackBerry 10 platform.

This week's podcast also covers the patent deal between Apple and HTC, the departure of Windows Live Messenger, the success of the Samsung Galaxy SIII and some mobile payment innovation.