New rules from UK telecoms regulator Ofcom will protect customers when they use their mobile phone on a foreign network. In addition, customers will be alerted if they are inadvertently roaming, perhaps because they're near an international border.

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'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.

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.

Time for another podcast presented by Iain Graham, James Rosewell and Mark Bridge. They begin this week's programme by talking about the latest enterprise-friendly developments from BlackBerry.

Next comes a new survey from Ofcom about the UK's 4G data speeds, followed by news about TalkTalk's MVNO deal with Telefonica, the growth of WiFi in the home and a report from AVG about social media sapping smartphone performance.

The new Microsoft Band, the Samsung Galaxy A smartphones and the Huawei Honor 6 are all discussed in this week's podcast.

We also look at some of the mobile industry's other big stories, including Amazon UK's mobile phone deals, the Lenovo purchase of Motorola Mobility, LG's quarterly results and the anticipated increase in WiFi hotspots.

The new Apple iPad tablets, Google's latest Nexus devices, Android Lollipop, wearable tech from will.i.am and the world's slimmest smartphone all feature in this week's podcast.

We're also talking about free mobile data for Christmas, 4.5G technology being rolled out in the UK, 5G technology being tested in South Korea, the end of an era for webOS and video messages that self-destruct.