Culture Secretary Jeremy Hunt has called for mobile broadband operators to put their differences aside and press on with the 4G spectrum auction.

Ofcom, the telecoms industry watchdog, was expected to publish the terms of the selloff before the end of this month, but that date has been pushed back following opposition from the likes of O2.

Speaking at the Royal Television Society's Cambridge Convention yesterday evening (September 14th 2011), Mr Hunt stressed the need to roll out super-fast mobile broadband speeds to promote growth in the UK.

"We must press on as quickly as possible with the 4G auction," he insisted, citing Sweden, Germany, France and Italy as countries that have all finished - or are close to completing - their own spectrum sales.

"Mobile phone operators must put aside competitive differences and work together in their common - and our national - interest to make this happen," the politician said.

Mr Hunt went on to state he wants to look into improving the management and allocation of spectrum in a bid to meet the "massively increasing" demand for mobile broadband data usage, which is expected to grow 26-fold by 2015.

"We must assume that whether at home or on the move, the devices people use to access the internet will be mobile from now on," the Culture Secretary explained.

Airwaves must be made more readily available to smaller companies, he argued, while spectrum trading and making full use of licence-exempt spectrum - in a similar manner to Bluetooth and Wi-Fi - should be encouraged.

Commenting on the delay to the spectrum auction earlier this month, an Ofcom spokesman said several technical issues, such as the relocation of digital TV signals, must be "satisfactorily resolved" before new mobile broadband networks can be rolled out.

The first deployments will not begin until 2013 at the earliest, the source added.

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