There’s been a lot press interest in the recent decision by Orange UK to increase its ‘pay monthly’ price plan charges by 4.34% from 8th January 2012.

The company says ‘out of plan’ charges - additional calls, text messages and data - will not be changing.

Mark Bridge writes:

Today’s mobile phone customers want more and more mobile data, which is stretching network capacity. In addition, many of those consumers would rather not be committed to a limit; they’d rather have a mobile internet tariff that is (or appears to be) unlimited. This puts even more pressure on mobile networks.

Randy Fuller of Tekelec talks about the ability of shared data plans to reduce 'bill shock'. He then explains the challenges of traffic management for mobile networks... and looks to a future where mobile devices regularly switch between different networks.

In this week’s edition of The Fonecast we start with an ombudsman’s plea to sort out ‘unlimited’ data tariffs in the UK. We then move on to mobile music before covering mobile wallets, mobile gaming and the mobile patent wars. There’s even time for a little digital art.

As always, you can listen to the programme on our website audio player, via iTunes, by subscribing to our RSS feed or by downloading the MP3.

Mark Bridge writes:

Having read some of last week’s headlines, you might think the UK’s Communication Ombudsman has told mobile phone networks not to describe their data tariffs as ‘unlimited’ unless they really are. However, what’s actually happened is that one of the UK’s communication ombudsmen (ombudspeople?) has asked mobile operators to be clear about any limits, to stop unexpectedly high bills from building up and to tell customers before they exceed any limit. Better than nothing but hardly earth-shattering.