Following over 50 rounds of intense blind bidding, Ofcom has announced that all five winning bidders of the UK’s 4G LTE auction have secured valuable 800MHz spectrum.

Ofcom auctioned off a total of 250 MHz of spectrum in two separate bands. The lower-frequency 800 MHz band is part of the ‘digital dividend’ which was freed up when analogue terrestrial TV was switched off last year, and will result in better in-building coverage.

Mobile broadband solution provider ZyXEL is trying to improve the quality and coverage of 3G mobile broadband services in the home by integrating Alcatel-Lucent’s residential small cells software into its consumer networking devices.

3G coverage in the home can often be poor due to a weak signal, which can either be caused by the building structure impeding the signal, or by the physical distance of the building from the operator’s base station.

Global payments company Visa has launched a new plug-and-play mobile money platform as it looks to seize a greater share of the m-payments market.

Targeted initially at unbanked customers in India and Rwanda, the new platform links a newly-created financial account to a mobile phone number.

Mobile data analysis firm RootMetrics has found that UK-based operator EE’s 4G LTE roll-out is delivering on public promises and is a “measured success” when compared to similar roll-outs in the US.

Tests conducted in Liverpool, Cardiff and Sheffield in December to compare how 4G LTE performed against 3G services offered by EE and rival networks found that EE’s 4G LTE speeds are more than twice as fast as 3G in the three cities.

Networking leader Cisco has predicted a 13-fold increase in mobile Internet traffic over the next four years in its annual Visual Networking Index (VNI) global mobile data traffic forecast due to an increased number of mobile devices and wireless machine-to-machine (M2M) connections.

Ericsson has launched a Plan to Provision for Mobile solution to help operators speed up the roll-out of new services on their 2G, 3G and LTE networks.

The new solution, which is designed for operators’ OSS, will ensure that their networks can handle the future growth by simplifying and automating the assignment of new network capacity and the rearrangement of network facilities.

Smartphone usage is on the rise all across Europe, with UK consumers leading the way in terms of m-commerce applications and mobile shopping, according to new research from Nielsen and comScore.

In December 2012, all European countries crossed the 50 percent mark for smartphone penetration for the first time, with the highest penetration being in Spain, at 66 percent, according to comScore.

Ahead of Mobile World Congress, Ericsson has made a series of new announcements dealing with mobile broadband coverage and capacity; mobile services management; and applications and device testing.

The vendor is extending its Antenna Integrated Radio (AIR) portfolio with the launch of AIR 32, a new solution that allows for the introduction of LTE and HSPA without requiring additional antennas or radio units to be added to network sites.

Small cells developer Ubiquisys has announced a new partnership with Saguna Networks to provide a small cell-based caching solution to help ease traffic congestion on mobile operators’ networks.

Saguna provides Radio Access Network (RAN) application acceleration and mobile content delivery software that works over HSPA and LTE networks.

Wireless device testing firm Anite has signed a new three-year deal with Deutsche Telekom to provide interoperability test solutions for mobile devices on its network.

DT is no stranger to Anite’s SAS platform, which it has been using for over five years to analyse issues including dropped calls, non-received calls and network-related signalling.