European Commission officials are concerned that Europe's competitive advantage in mobile phone services could be undermined if the lucrative auctions used to award licences for next-generation services in the UK are repeated elsewhere.

Telecoms officials fear other EU states will now opt for auctions, chasing the kind of gains achieved by the UK, which raised £22.5 billion sterling (€39 billion) last week from auctioning five licences. "When bids are so much higher than expected, companies are making a huge financial investment just to get the licences," said one official.