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.

Mark Bridge writes:

In recent months we’ve run some surveys on our home page. The results make interesting reading (although we’ll happily admit they’re not likely to be representative of UK mobile users in general).

First, we asked “Which Operating System will be on your next handset?”

Mark Bridge writes:

Santa’s bringing tablets this Christmas – and I’m not talking about the plink-plink-fizz of Alka Seltzer. These are tablet computers… and they’re going to be everywhere.

It all started with the Apple iPad; a device so widely anticipated, the TV advertisements didn’t even need to say what it did.

The Definition of Mobile event promises a distinctly different perspective for those interested in the future of mobile, summarising the key facts big business needs to grasp to execute a successful mobile strategy.

We'll be bringing you a summary of the key points during mid-September.

The best and brightest mobile-related blogging from the last seven days is now online at MSearchGroove.com. Peggy Anne Salz, this week's Carnival host, looks at a wide range of topics – including an in-depth post from Ajit Jaokar refuting recent suggestions that the web is dead.

Mark Bridge writes:

Last week the Wall Street Journal published a feature that explained how techies in New York wanted the city’s 212 area code as part of their mobile phone numbers. This may seem strange from a UK perspective until you realise that American mobile phone numbers don’t have dedicated mobile ‘dialling codes’. Instead, they’re all prefixed with a local area code and cost the same to call as those landline numbers they mimic.

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.

Leaving your wallet at home and going shopping with nothing more than your mobile phone is still a science-fiction vision of the future.

But it's getting much closer to reality, thanks to a UK-based company called Corethree. They're currently working with a number of public transport operators and have brought mobile tickets to a wide range of smartphones.

This week's podcast begins with news about the new 'quad play' television service offered in the UK by EE.

We also talk about HTC's new camera, an ethical smartphone, a complaint from Ofcom, mobile payments, machine-to-machine connections and yet another online security breach.

In this week's podcast we begin with more news about Phones 4u, as Carphone Warehouse steps in to help iPhone 6 buyers.

We also talk about problems at Apple, a brand new handset from BlackBerry, mobile payments, phones on planes and a device that promises to stop people from texting while driving.

This week's podcast begins with the latest news from Phones 4u, where hundreds of jobs have been saved but there are a large number of redundancies as well.

Iain, James and Mark then talk about new products from Amazon, BlackBerry and Panasonic, mobile payment innovation from Indonesia and the UK, the acquisition of IoT specialist Neul and Apple's updated privacy policy.