When, earlier this year, the UK communications regulator, Ofcom, set back the date of its planned 4G spectrum auction by more than a year, it claimed that the change would leave the actual roll out date for 4G services unchanged. The comment raised some eyebrows: surely, in practice, the faster we have the auction, the faster we can roll out the service? It seemed as though Ofcom were just covering their backs or, at the very least, refusing to acknowledge that arguments between mobile broadband providers have been one of the auction’s largest delaying factors thus far.

Similarly, last week, Ofcom announced that 4G won’t be widely available in the UK until 2015. But denied that it had ever planned anything different. It may be true that Ofcom never specified an earlier date for widespread deployment, however, but they did predict that UK consumers would start to see 4G services by the middle of 2013 just a few months ago.

Under the regulator’s new annual plan for 2012/13 that seems unlikely.

What’s setting back UK 4G?

In their plan’s statement of intention, Ofcom say that they’ll, “continue to pursue a balanced approach that makes appropriate use of the tools at our disposal – both market mechanisms and regulatory intervention - to secure optimal use of the radio spectrum." Those two tools have to solve two problems: increasingly ungentlemanly competition between the potential 4G providers and long drawn-out technical issues.

The competition side looks unlikely to clear without further infighting: 3 claim that Vodafone and O2, who already have access to a large chunk of sub-1GHz spectrum, shouldn’t be allowed even more access to spectrum that carried 4G; Vodafone and O2 claim that any move to do so is anti-competitive and against EU law.

On the technical side is the amount of space in the spectrum currently taken up by Digital Terrestrial Television (DTT) and some other technologies. DTT is used by about half of the UK’s TV users, a far higher proportion than in other countries where satellite and cable dominates, while, for example, aeronautical radio causes interference at the 2.6GHz band level. Ofcom claims it needs time to clear the spectrum of these interferences completely and that’s not expected to happen until late 2013.

Julia edits consumer site Choose, which helps UK users compare deals on broadband and covers mobile broadband.