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:

The mobile user interface seems to fall in and out of fashion. Nokia and Apple have both transformed the mobile UI in previous years… but still the challenge of creating the 'perfect' user interface design remains.

This focus on mobile usability is the main topic of today's special podcast, which includes Chris Millington of Doro UK and Jerome Nadel from MobiWire.

Mark Bridge writes:

This week has been dominated by the media frenzy that is Mobile World Congress. James Rosewell and I were at MWC for all four days… but even a podcast every day wasn't enough to include all the news, so expect more reports from us next week.

Daniel Joseph Barry of Napatech writes:

Avoiding the dreaded Scissor Effect has become the number 1 priority for mobile carriers. The scissor effect refers to the phenomenon of rising infrastructure costs and flat revenues; an unsustainable situation for any business. The scissor effect has already been witnessed in fixed line networks and now mobile carriers face the same challenge in relation to mobile data services. Is it possible for mobile carriers to grow revenue per user in line with bandwidth usage?

James Rosewell writes:

Nokia held their Developers Day during day 1 of Mobile World Congress 2011. Rich Green, new CTO at Nokia, kicked off the event by talking about the future of Symbian. In a nutshell here are the key facts:

Mark Bridge writes:

“Hot products. Cool companies. Meet the press.”

That was the tagline for ShowStoppers, a showcase event that took place last night before today’s opening of Mobile World Congress. As you probably heard in today’s podcast, I went along and met a few of the participants.

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.