UK telecoms group BT and mobile network operator EE have agreed a takeover deal.

It comes less than two months after the companies entered into exclusive negotiations with each other.

Jon Carter of Deutsche Telekom has provided us with his ‘Connected Home’ predictions for 2015:

Connected home products and services rely on different communication standards, be it ZigBee, HomeMatic or Z-Wave. Only platforms which both handle established standards and are able to learn new protocols will hold their ground in the market in 2015. Customers don’t want to be limited in their product choices or care about compatibility issues. Integrating any device into a connected home setup needs to be smooth and simple.

BT Group plc says it’s entered into an exclusivity agreement with Deutsche Telekom and Orange, allowing it to negotiate a possible acquisition of EE’s UK mobile business.

It originally responded to press speculation with a statement last month.

Earlier this week BT announced it had been contacted by shareholders in two UK mobile network operators about a possible transaction in which BT could acquire their UK mobile business. It revealed one of those companies was O2 but didn’t name the second network.

Deutsche Telekom and Orange, which jointly own UK network EE, have now confirmed they are the other network having talks with BT.

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:

There's one tech story that’s dominated the week’s news: Microsoft buying Skype. "Why?" and "Really?" appear to be the top questions; we'll do our best to answer them and provide some more insight in Wednesday's podcast.

Mark Bridge writes:

The Apple App Store runs in a similar way to many high-street shops. It decides what it'll sell. It decides what it won't sell. It has special offers. It has free gifts. It promotes certain products above others.

Peter Fedynsky of voanews.com writes:

The United States is introducing a new public alert system that will deliver warnings to mobile phones in the event of emergency. The system is first being rolled out in New York and Washington and will operate nationwide by April 2012.

James Rosewell writes:

Tonight's BBC Apprentice was about building a Mobile Application. Two teams of supposedly bright entrepreneurial talent were tasked with creating a Mobile App in 2 days. The App with the highest number of downloads 24 hours after being launched would win this stage of the competition. App stores didn't include Apple, but did include Nokia, Android and Blackberry.

Mark Bridge writes:

It's time for another round-up of the week's mobile industry news.

Two of the recurring themes we've encountered in the last few months are legal action and partnerships. This week's legal story involves a conflict between Huawei and ZTE, while the partnership news sees RIM working with Microsoft. Yes, you may well raise your eyebrows. It seems Nokia-loving Microsoft is also a friend of the BlackBerry.

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.