Vodafone, Orange and T-Mobile took five years to tell customers their voicemails had been hacked by the NOTW, they admitted to the Leveson Inquiry yesterday.

Outlook: When AT&T, the second-largest mobile operator in the US, announced a $39bn merger with the fourth-largest, T-Mobile USA, in May, AT&T chief executive Randall Stephenson must have been the only person who thought this deal would make it past the competition authorities.

Richard Moat, the telecoms executive who won praise for turning around T-Mobile UK before its merger with Orange UK, has quit the Everything Everywhere venture that was formed by the combination of the two businesses.

US competition authorities moved last night to block a merger of two of the four largest mobile-phone operators in the country, saying the deal could raise prices and reduce services.

Virgin Media shrugged off the exodus of thousands of customers to post a slight rise in revenues as ongoing subscribers paid for more or improved services.

The owner of Orange and T-Mobile can finally meet European competition regulations and sell off spectrum, after Ofcom approved a trading mechanism for the commodity that is crucial to the mobile industry.

Everything Everywhere, the parent company of Orange and T-Mobile, is set to expand its presence on the UK high street with plans to launch 30 new stores this year.

Phone users with some of the UK's major companies have been charged the higher VAT rate for calls made in December - but are not entitled to a refund, they have been warned.

T-Mobile has backed away from plans to slash existing customers' quotas for accessing the internet on their mobiles after news of its plans prompted an outcry.

And so I spoke too soon. Not about Berlin – on which more later – but about T-Mobile. Remember my eulogy to their customer service? The column, a few weeks back, which recounted in great detail the kindness of a man in their customer service office who said that I could pay my extortionate bill – wrung up after accidentally leaving my mobile wireless on while on a work trip to Asia – in a series of interest-free instalments? Well he was, as it turns out, wrong. Utterly, completely wrong. He froze my direct debit all right – but he failed to do anything else. Instead of a note being put on my account, nothing happened. Well, nothing except my credit rating crashing through the floor.