Ofcom gave the green light to mobile operator Everything Everywhere (which is the parent company of both Orange and T-Mobile) and BT to prolong their Cornish 4G trial until the 30th of June, 2012.

As a quick reminder, the scheme has kicked off back in October, is running on the 800MHz spectrum band and currently covers rural St. Newlyn East.

The firms asked for an extension because they felt they needed more time to monitor and study how 4G LTE technology runs in remote and rural locations in order to establish how best to deploy it in the near future (after Ofcom auctions the spectrum that is).

Before the 4G trial residents of St. Newlyn East had to put up with fixed-line broadband speeds of up to 2Mbps on a good day.

Up until now the trial has showed that speeds of 7Mbps were attainable within the area, which is good news for the community, but probably the ante can be upped a bit more - but that is just SimplifyDigital being too demanding as the current mobile broadband average speed is just 1.5Mbps.

Nigel Stagg, CEO of BTWholesale, was quoted as saying:

"This trial is enabling us to see at first hand the real difference LTE is making in rural Cornwall and how it could provide an alternative mode of delivery in rural areas to complement fibre delivered broadband.

"There's no doubt that fixed line solutions offer a faster and more reliable broadband service, but there isn't a single silver bullet to meet the rural broadband challenge."

Olaf Swantee, CEO of Everything Everywhere, said:

"This trial has been key in investigating ways to rapidly bring 4G LTE to Britain, and Ofcom is helping us do the groundwork to accelerate the UK from laggard to leader."

Now let's sit back, relax and wait until Ofcom auctions the spectrum needed for 4G deployment.