Orange Austria is to be sold to Hutchison 3G Austria, subject to regulatory approval.

France Telecom-Orange currently owns 35% of the business, while Mid Europa Partners controls 65%. Both parties have agreed to sell their combined stakes to Hutchison.

Mobile advertising network madvertise has arranged more than $10 million in new funding, with US-based Blumberg Capital and previous investor Earlybird Venture Capital both agreeing to provide funds.

Berlin-based madvertise has grown over the last two years to become market leader in Germany, Austria and Switzerland, making it one of the largest mobile ad networks in Europe. Last week, the company announced that its turnover had increased more than 300% in the first half of 2011.

Analyst firm Berg Insight says HSPA and LTE mobile technology accounted for 20.6% of the total number of broadband connections on PCs and tablets in Europe at the end of 2010.

The number of mobile broadband subscribers grew by 33% year-on-year in 2010 to 33.9 million and is expected to keep growing to 96 million by 2016. In North America the figures were lower, with mobile broadband accounting for just 13.2% of the total number of connections.

Mark Bridge writes:

The adage that “the customer is always right” has apparently been disproved by a recent survey of mobile phone users.

Mobile News reports that virtual networks Virgin Mobile and Tesco Mobile outperformed their network partners in a recent customer satisfaction survey carried out by research firm YouGov for price comparison website uSwitch.

Mark Bridge writes:

I knew I’d seen it before. Towards the end of last week I read about a study from the Department of Computer and Information Science at the University of Pennsylvania that said it was pretty easy to identify passwords from smudges on touchscreen mobile phones.

James Rosewell writes:

Yesterday I received the following text message from O2: “You’ve gone over your data allowance on your mobile. You need to cut down or get a bigger Bolt On to keep using the internet.” I thought this was strange as I’ve an unlimited data bolt on applied to my O2 UK contract so I decided to telephone O2 customer services to find out a little bit more. Here’s what happened.

This week's Carnival of the Mobilists – the best mobile blogging (and podcasting!) of the last seven days – is online at Tam Hanna's new TamsBada site. As always, you'll find a wide variety of mobile-related subjects and discussions.

Mark Bridge writes:

Supermarkets. You either love ‘em or hate ‘em. Actually, that’s not true. Most of us seem to be happy enough with a half-price bottle of wine but less convinced about globalisation and supplier relationships.

But none of that’s bothering me today. Instead, I’m troubled – as I have been for several months – by the TV commercial for Tesco’s prepay mobile phone tariff.

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.