3 UK has warned that it will likely be swallowed up if it fails to secure LTE spectrum in the country’s auctions planned for the first quarter of next year. In an interview with the Financial Times (FT), Kevin Russell (pictured), chief executive of the UK’s smallest operator, urged regulator Ofcom to impose caps on how much spectrum any one mobile operator can own below 1GHz bandwidth (the auctions are for 800MHz and 2.6GHz bandwidth, but 3 UK’s largest rivals already own 900MHz bandwidth), as per last year’s LTE auction in Germany. “There is a risk of a strategic premium being bid to squeeze 3 out of the marketplace,” Russell told the FT. “If 3 is blocked out of spectrum in the auction process, there will be consolidation in the marketplace.” The FT notes that Russell is particularly concerned that his rivals – Everything Everywhere, O2 and Vodafone – will trump his company and buy up most or all of the spectrum in the auction.

Separately, 3 UK yesterday upped the ante in its bid to battle larger rivals in the smartphone space. It has extended its unlimited mobile data offering to prepaid customers, with prices starting at £15 a month. The move comes at a time when the world’s biggest operators are migrating to tiered data tariffs to ensure heavy users pay for the capacity they consume. Given 3’s status as the smallest UK operator, it likely does not have the same network capacity issues faced by its larger rivals.