Ofcom is reported to be delaying its plans to auction radio spectrum that could be used for 4G mobile phone services.

The auction was originally planned for earlier this year but is now unlikely to take place until late 2012.

Everything Everywhere and BT Wholesale have started their live trial of next generation 4G LTE broadband in the UK.

The two companies are working with Nokia Siemens Networks and Huawei to provide wireless broadband to around 200 customers in the St Newlyn East and south Newquay area of Cornwall.

Analyst firm Berg Insight says HSPA and LTE mobile technology accounted for 20.6% of the total number of broadband connections on PCs and tablets in Europe at the end of 2010.

The number of mobile broadband subscribers grew by 33% year-on-year in 2010 to 33.9 million and is expected to keep growing to 96 million by 2016. In North America the figures were lower, with mobile broadband accounting for just 13.2% of the total number of connections.

A new report from Juniper Research says mobile network operators urgently need to spend billions of dollars increasing capacity and optimising their backhaul networks to meet the demands of mobile broadband users.

The report calculates that operators need to spend almost $840 billion (£530 billion) globally over the next five years.

Mark Bridge writes:

Those quarterly figures keep coming. In our Wednesday podcast we talked about Apple and Nokia – and since then we’ve heard from Everything Everywhere, LG, Motorola, Samsung (with its multi-million selling Galaxy S II), Telefonica and Virgin Media. Each had something positive to stay, although some were more convincing than others.