Neelie Kroes, European Commission Vice President for the Digital Agenda, announces the EC's new plans to cut the cost of roaming from next year. Mobile phone calls, text messages and data charges will all be given maximum limits - and new 'roaming only' tariffs could also be introduced.

Earlier this year we reported that Deutsche Telekom and France Telecom-Orange had agreed to work together on machine-to-machine communication in a number of countries. The agreement currently covers France, Germany, Belgium, Luxembourg, the Netherlands and the UK.

TeliaSonera has now joined the M2M Service Cooperation Agreement between the two companies, adding Sweden, Norway, Finland, Denmark, Estonia and Lithuania to the list of countries.

Hot on the heels of this month's changes to international 'roaming' charges - the cost of using a mobile phone when abroad - comes a new proposal from the European Commission. The new regulations, if voted into law, would allow customers to sign up for a separate roaming contract on their existing mobile phone number from July 2014.

In addition, there'd be a further reduction to maximum call costs and SMS costs in Europe, along with a new cap on the cost of using mobile data when abroad.

We start this week's edition of The Fonecast by talking about Nortel's patents before moving on to Google+, roaming charges, mobile payments and health concerns. We also find time to discuss app stores, some new research and the Pope's iPad.

As usual, you can download this week's show from iTunes - or you can listen to the podcast by using the audio player on our website.

We're talking about Nortel patents, Google Plus, roaming charges and health concerns in this week's mobile industry podcast... but that's not all. We also discuss mobile payments, security, gambling, apps and the Pope's first Tweet.