Vodafone UK has launched a new set of ‘pay monthly’ tariffs called Vodafone Red, which offer unlimited voice calls and unlimited text messaging. There are also larger mobile data allowances than previous tariffs.

Customers can benefit from unlimited UK calls and texts plus 1GB of internet usage from £29 per month with the standard Red tariff. Alternatively, Red Data from £34 per month includes 2GB of data with unlimited calls and SMS text messaging.

Mark Bridge writes:

Last week, French iOS security researcher pod2g revealed a potential security risk with the Apple iPhone’s handling of SMS text messages.

All text messages can be sent with an optional ‘reply to’ telephone number that’s different from the sender’s number. The majority of text messages don’t use this feature - and many phones either ignore the extra data or display both numbers - but Apple’s iOS seems to handle it in a potentially risky way.

The amount of voice calls from mobile phones is falling for the first time ever, according to new research published by UK telecoms regulator Ofcom.

It says the volume of voice calls from mobiles fell by 1% in 2011, while the volume of calls from fixed-line phones dropped by 10%. The average Briton now sends 50 text messages per week; a figure that’s more than doubled in the past four years.

There's plenty of variety in The Fonecast this week. We start the podcast with news of MeeGo's resurrection by Finnish smartphone company Jolla before talking about a mobile network that’s giving away mobile data whenever its customers watch video advertisements.

There's also time to discuss Telefonica's recent deals, the rise of free WiFi availability, tablet-related legal action, malware in the Apple App Store and the truth behind a recent 'exploding mobile phone' story.

A new forecast from Informa Telecoms & Media expects mobile operators to increase their share of app revenues from 10% last year to 17% in 2016. However, they’ll also see their share of mobile content and commerce revenue drop from 44% in 2011 to 31% in 2016.

Although many services including mobile entertainment and messaging are going ‘over the top’, avoiding direct payments to networks, the adoption of carrier billing for paid app downloads will help to offset this lost revenue.