Acer smartphone due next month

Computer manufacturer Acer is expected to launch a smartphone on 16th February at this year's Mobile World Congress, according to reports. [Sources: Pocket-Lint.co.uk; DigiTimes.com]

Kevin Spacey to headline Mobile World Congress

The headline speaker - or, at least, one of the headline speakers - at next year's GSM Association Mobile World Congress in Barcelona is Kevin Spacey. Yes, the Academy award-winning actor and director. He'll be talking about mobile entertainment and hosting the MOFILM Mobile Short Film Festival, described as the world’s first global mobile film festival. [Press release]

New podcast from 'The Fonecast' now online

This week's downloadable podcast from TheFonecast.com has a special report from Mobile News online editor Mark Sennett at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. Iain Graham and Mark Bridge take their usual look at industry news and gossip, along with a quick review of the new LG KF600. Each broadcast can be downloaded automatically by including us in your RSS reader, by using iTunes or by visiting the Mobile News website.

GSMA Launches Mobile Alliance Against Child Sexual Abuse

One of the attention-grabbing stories from this week's Mobile World Congress (and mentioned in this week's podcast) is the GSM Association's launch of Mobile Alliance against Child Sexual Abuse Content. As the name suggests, it aims to block child sexual abuse content from the mobile internet. The Alliance has been founded by the GSMA (the mobile industry's international trade association), Hutchison 3G Europe, mobilkom austria, Orange FT Group, Telecom Italia, Telefonica/02, Telenor Group, TeliaSonera, T-Mobile Group, Vodafone Group and dotMobi. Members will block access to inappropriate sites, will remove inappropriate content posted on their own pages and will encourage customers to report online child sexual abuse content. [Press release]

EU tells networks to cut roaming data costs by summer 2008

Viviane Reding, EU Commissioner for Information Society and Media, has said she want to see the 'roaming' charges for text messages and data usage cut by 1st July 2008. In a discussion at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona she said "sending a text message or downloading data on a mobile phone while in another EU country should not be substantially more expensive for consumers" than doing the same on their 'home' network. [Source: Forbes.com]