Communications business AT&T has agreed to spend $1.9 billion (£1.2 billion) to acquire some 700MHz mobile spectrum from Verizon Wireless.

It’s acquiring 39 licences that cover 42 million people in 18 states.

Nokia has announced that it’ll be producing an NFC version of the Nokia Lumia 610 smartphone.

The Nokia Lumia 610 NFC has been certified for contactless payments with MasterCard PayPass technology and Visa payWave. It’s expected to launch on Orange networks early in the third quarter of 2012.

Two years after its formation at Mobile World Congress, the Wholesale Applications Community has launched the beta version of its in-application billing Network API.

The service, which enables customers to pay for digital goods via their mobile bill, is currently supported by AT&T, Deutsche Telekom, KT, LG U+, Telefonica Group, Telenor Group, Telekom Austria Group, SKT and SMART Communications.

Facebook says it’s currently working with AT&T, Deutsche Telekom, Orange, Telefónica, T-Mobile USA, Verizon, Vodafone, KDDI and Softbank to introduce operator billing.

This would enable Facebook users to buy digital goods via a mobile web application and pay by charging the purchase to their mobile phone account.

Happy New Year!  We’re back with our first podcast of 2012, containing the biggest mobile industry news headlines from the past couple of weeks. That means we’re talking about everything from tweeting in court to AT&T, from BlackBerry takeovers to (yet more) patent battles.

As always, you can listen to this week’s edition of The Fonecast on our website audio player, via iTunes, by subscribing to our RSS feed or by downloading the MP3.