There's plenty of talk about mobile networks in this week's podcast. We start with a new charity-focussed MVNO before moving on to Ofcom's plans for avoiding a mobile capacity crunch.

There's also talk about WiFi offloading, BlackBerry's free voice calling service, Nokia's map business and much more as well.

Mark Bridge writes:

The last few days have been particularly busy for UK telecoms regulator Ofcom. It started the week by announcing its rules for next year’s UK 4G mobile spectrum auction – expect services to go live in around six months – and it ended the week with plans to avoid a 5G capacity crunch.

Ofcom has published plans to ensure that UK mobile phone networks are able to support the ever-increasing demand for mobile data capacity. It’s also published new information that shows mobile data usage has more than doubled in the past 12 months; up from 9 million gigabytes last year to 20 million GB.

By 2030, it’s thought that demand for mobile data could be 80 times higher than today.

New analysis of the UK’s communication habits has found that people can be categorised into five different groups of communicators, ranging from the ‘always on’ to the ‘detached’.

Earlier this year, Ofcom’s Communication Market Report revealed that the UK is now texting more that talking. Further analysis of the research, published today, looks at the methods and frequency of communication, as well people’s attitudes towards it.

UK telecoms regulator Ofcom has published its timetable for the forthcoming 4G mobile spectrum auction, along with reserve prices and final details of the auction rules. It’s described as the largest-ever sale of mobile airwaves in the UK.

The 4G services enabled by the auction will offer faster mobile data connections and more capacity than current 3G tariffs.