O2 and Vodafone are threatening the government with legal action over its plans to sell radio spectrum currently owned by Orange and T-Mobile, reports FT.com. This could delay the UK's 'Digital Britain' broadband plans from becoming law until after the general election.

The merger between Orange and T-Mobile's UK business has recently been approved as long as the new business sells some of its 1800MHz bandwidth. However, Vodafone and O2 are both said to be unhappy that the surplus spectrum will be sold to a single bidder and are apparently talking about appealing against this decision.

Orange has signed three new mobile virtual network operator (MVNO) deals via Transatel, its mobile virtual network aggregator partner.

Unicom, Catalyst and Axis Telecom will join Orange’s five existing MVNO partnerships (which include Lycamobile and 3 UK's national roaming agreement).

Unicom will offer business services to its fixed-line customer base, Axis Telecom will offer SIM-only deals to its fixed-line business and residential base, while Catalyst will work with partners to provide niche groups with mobile services. All three MVNOs are expected to launch in the first half of this year.

Just over a year ago, Orange and Barclaycard announced a partnership that promised "the biggest revolution in payments since plastic cards were introduced over 40 years ago".

Then, at the beginning of January, we reported on an NFC-equipped credit card from the two companies.

Now we hear that Barclaycard and Orange are planning to launch mobile payments later this year with an NFC-equipped mobile phone. Sarah Mansfield, Barclaycard’s Head of Innovation Marketing, talked about the plans at a marketing event earlier this month.