Voice over IP service Skype has announced the first countries where customers will be able to use its direct mobile operator billing option. This will let customers pay for Skype credit by charging it to their mobile phone account.

The facility has just been launched in Russia and will soon be enabled in the USA and Canada as well.

New figures from IT business Cisco forecast a 13-fold increase in mobile internet data between now and 2017.

It’s expecting worldwide mobile data traffic to reach 11.2 exabytes per month - an annual total of 134EB - by 2017. That’s 134 times more than all the fixed and mobile internet traffic generated in 2000.

Back in December, Three UK had an advertisement banned by the Advertising Standards Authority because it hadn’t explained the possibility of monthly charges rising during a fixed-term mobile phone contract - and now Vodafone’s web site has been hit in the same way.

A tariff promoted as costing “from just £10.50 a month” caused a complaint from a member of the public who pointed out that the monthly price could be increased during the contract.

International cable TV, broadband and telephone business Liberty Global is acquiring Virgin Media in the UK. Virgin Media itself was created from a merger, when NTL and Telewest joined with Virgin Mobile in 2006.

The new combined business will reach 47 million homes, covering 25 million people across 14 countries.

We start this week's podcast by talking about the launch of BlackBerry 10 before moving on to discuss a 4G promise from Three UK.

The numerical theme continues with the Microsoft 4Afrika project, a handful of quarterly results and some investment news. Plus there’s worrying new malware and a curious Apple trademark application.