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.

The maximum charge for mobile phone calls in Europe has fallen again, thanks to the European Commission's 2009 ruling on mobile phone charges.

Consumers on any standard UK tariff will now receive the so-called 'Eurotariff' of no more than 35 Euro cents per minute for calls made (38p incl. VAT) and 11 cents (12p incl. VAT) per minute for calls received while abroad in the EU.