“Sweden’s LTE customers have waited nearly 3 years, but still didn’t get [the 4G] iPhone,” GSM Association director of technology Dan Warren told me in a Twitter conversation. “In fact anyone with 2.6GHz or 800MHz has missed out.”

The airwaves Warren referenced are the primary 4G bands available to European operators, and both were left unsupported in all three versions on the iPhone 5 Apple revealed today. Europe didn’t miss out on Apple’s new LTE love completely. Operators deploying 4G in the 1800 MHz bands such as Everything Everywhere, T-Mobile Germany, 3 Italia and 3 UK. But those carriers are a minority who happen to have leftover 2G spectrum they can repurpose for LTE.

Apple is simply going where the current LTE networks lie, and for the most part they’re in Korea, Japan and in the US. The Scandinavian countries may have been pioneers when it comes to LTE, but they make up a small part of the overall European market. Most operators over the Atlantic won’t have sizable LTE networks launched until well into 2013. Apple figures it can tackle their frequencies with next year’s iPhone.

Still, it must be a bit disheartening if you’re a European planning to buy the iPhone 5, knowing your new phone won’t work on the 4G networks in your country. The iPhone 5 may be a revolutionary device for the US, but that revolution won’t hit Europe until the iPhone 6.

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Not too long ago, TV Everywhere was a bold concept being evangelized by Time Warner (NYSE: TWX) CEO Jeff Bewkes: subscribers would pay once for programming on cable or satellite, then have access to that content across platforms and devices. It provided a potential solution for multichannel operators frustrated by programmers sharing their content for free digitally with consumers directly and for programmers looking for leverage with digital rights and access, and could be a valuable anti-cord cutting tool.

Bewkes offered Time Warner’s own premium HBO, available only as pay TV through cable, satellite or telecom, as an example of how it would work. Subscribers who paid for HBO on, say, Comcast (NSDQ: CMCSA), would have access to HBO Go via authentication. It worked beautifully, offering instant online subscription video on demand (SVOD) of current shows, The Sopranos, The Wire and more while expanding the potential value for subscribers by untethering it from the TV. The catch?

Subscribers have no control over access. It only worked as long as Time Warner and Comcast or other pay TV distributors could agree on terms. It took two years for HBO to be available to the bulk of its pay TV subs via authentication on computer or portable devices; major holdouts Time Warner Cable (NYSE: TWC) and Cablevision (NYSE: CVC) only signed on as 2011 came to a close. That came after TWC and Cablevision added a twist — asserting that the channels they traditionally provided through TV could be available on any screen through an in-house network.

Pay TV isn’t alone. On the video side, Netflix (NSDQ: NFLX), Hulu, Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) iTunes and others expanded from computer access to over-the-top boxes, gaming consoles like Xbox, tablets and smartphones — and through some of those or connected TVs, to TV sets. At Conde Nast, Time Inc. and some other magazine publishers, print and digital only-only subs get full access for one subscription. The New York Times offers options at different costs for different kinds of digital access but home delivery customers get it all included; other newspapers have their own variations.

It’s not exactly the content nirvana offered up by Qwest in its prescient ads about being able to offer every movie, book or musical performance ever produced to a customer at an off-the-beaten-path cafe or a middle-of-nowhere motel (as long as the business had an efficient broadband provider). But it is the beginning of a new age of ubiquity for people willing to pay for content — and scarcity for people who don’t pay directly.

Yes, it sounds a little off base to describe anything digital in terms of scarcity. The usual argument against charging for access is the consumer can get news, info and entertainment from a lot of sources and will turn to those rather than pay a fee. It’s a fair argument and one that rings true in a lot of cases, enabled for years by a traditional media strategy that untethered the print-video dual revenue stream of subscription/licensing and advertising for online distribution and by new digital-only ad-supported outlets. The expectation created was this kind of content would or should be free online. Most of today’s pay efforts are based on balancing that consumer expectation with the reality that online advertising alone can’t replace the disappearing dollars on the traditional side.

We are looking at a different kind of ubiquity and scarcity in digital content today, one that operates almost like pay TV and broadcast. Pay and you get access. Want it for free? Access may be delayed and some content won’t be available at all. Through last season, if you wanted to watch Glee after it aired on Fox (NSDQ: NWS) — a broadcast network — the new episode was online in 24 hours at Hulu or Fox and usually the five most recently aired episodes were available. Starting with the 2011-12 season, unless you subscribe to Hulu Plus or a multichannel provider that has a deal with Fox, you have to wait 8 days. By the way, the only way to get Hulu anywhere but a computer is to subscribe to Hulu Plus for $7.99 a month; basic Hulu is online only.

It also creates some of the same barriers as premium and pay TV. Some were in on Sex and the City or The Sopranos from the beginning; others didn’t meet Carrie or Tony til syndication. For the past few years, some of those barriers have been lowered as networks experimented with digital access. Now they’re going back up. Expect more networks to follow the Fox approach.

The app explosion opened new options. Papers like The Guardian that espoused free online access were willing to charge for app downloads and now, for app subscriptions. Apps became a new revenue stream — potential for some, very real for others — and added a new quandary. Should subscribers have access across every new platform and device for one fee or pay separately?

That’s particularly important when you consider that the cost of developing and deploying new apps can run into serious money for some publishers. Distribution has costs, too. Publishers who want to take advantage of the built-in sales base for iTunes and others have to pay for it with a share of the fee, usually 30 percent. They also give up some or all control over the customer relationship unless the subscription comes through the publisher outside of the app.

News Corp.’s tablet tabloid The Daily went for browser scarcity, charging for full access via iPad app. The same company’s New York Post blocks browser access on the iPad, requiring a paid app, but is open online for now. The Post is trying to keep apps as a separate pay space; its 52-week $273 “digital bundle” includes only the print subscription and the replica e-edition. (App subs get the first 30 days for $1.99, then it’s $9.99 a month or $99 a year.) The New York Times now includes full online access with subscriptions to its Kindle and Nook editions but its digital subscription access doesn’t include the Kindle newsstand, which is operated by Amazon. Freemium Spotify is only free online; the premium part covers mobile access.

The Boston Globe solved a lot of this in one fell swoop by designing its new subscription-only bostonglobe.com with HTML5, rendering it easy to read in any browser on any device. Boston.com is still free but gaining access to the full print and online content from the Globe takes a subscription to the new site.

There’s not an easy answer, especially when “everything everywhere” is a mantra.

As a subscription addict, I’m all for ubiquitous access. More than that, I expect it — and as a traveler who uses a mix of ways to read and watch, I need it. I’ve been separated from my home video subscriptions for 10 weeks now (broken Slingbox connection doesn’t help) and paying for a lot that I literally can’t see is frustrating. I know I’m an extreme case, though, both in my willingness to pay for multiple subscriptions and in my access requirements. I look to family and friends who are far less extreme though and I see a growing expectation that access to content, especially the kind you pay for, will be ubiquitous.

That doesn’t discount new platforms and devices as revenue streams. Each opens new opportunities for subscribtions or for one-off sales/rentals.streams/downloads. That does’t make it cost effective for every publisher to develop something new and device-centric, which either means doing without or accepting that some access will come at the expense of creativity. In the old days we called that shovelware; today’s more sophisticated development environment offers some better options.

In an iPad tablet world, it was easier to put off some of these decisions. But despite iPad’s continued dominance, choice is increasing as is Android’s market share. Millions of Kindle Fires are in use now plus Nook tablets, Samsung Galaxy, and more. Each OS has its issues but content publishers and creators have one that overrides them all: the need not to be left behind when a consumer switches devices.

That’s where “pay once, get it anywhere” should pay off.

Read the rest of the posts in our Coming in 2012 archives.

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Two things that jumped out at me: One consumer was juggling nine devices on a single 1 Mbps connection, which is certainly less than ideal. It’s also an extreme case, as most people use just a few connected devices, but the trend is leaning towards connectivity in everything.

Second: BT is looking at using LTE for home broadband connections through what it calls a “Home Hub.” Here in the U.S., we’re heavily focused on LTE as a mobile technology and not one for the home. Either way, LTE looks like a potential win for the U.K. and borders beyond.

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The UK regulator, Ofcom, said last week that auctions for 4G spectrum — originally scheduled for the first quarter of 2012 — will now likely be delayed until Q4 2012. LTE networks at their best can deliver data at speeds of 150Mbps, compared to the 1.5Mbps of current 3G networks. More realistically, early LTE services are likely to deliver speeds of around 10Mbps.

The news — which Ofcom slipped into an update to “stakeholders” rather than in a straight news release, noted that the regulator had received “a number of substantial and strongly argued responses” to its original auction consultation on 800MHz and 2.6GHz spectrum, conducted between March and May of this year. The 800MHz and 2.6GHz spectrum bands are the two bands that operators would use for LTE services.

The upshot? More government red-tape, it seems. “In light of these responses, and the significance of the decisions that we need to take – decisions that are likely to shape the future of the mobile sector in the UK for the next decade or more – we have decided to undertake a further round of consultation on these issues,” Ofcom notes.

That second consultation will likely come out later this year. Stakeholders — that is, operators, vendors, municipal bodies and others impacted by the auction — will then have at least two months to respond to the consultation. Ofcom will then assess the responses and issue dates for the auction, “perhaps starting in Q4 2012.”

Perhaps sensing that people would assume this means “big delay”, Ofcom points out that the spectrum would not have switched over, in any case, for new use until 2013, “so this step is unlikely to have a material impact on the timeline for the availability of new services to consumers.” But as Mobile Today points out, the delay will mean that new services will not likely come online until 2014. That’s a full three years (and possibly more) after the first LTE services went live in the U.S., with Verizon Wireless.

Ofcom does not go into details about what exactly stakeholders have flagged up that has led to it delaying the auction. Separately, though, mobile operator Three has been outspoken how it would fare in an auction against the other three, much larger operators, especially if the others were allowed to use spectrum that they already owned to extend those services, rather than simply bidding for new spectrum.

There may also be questions about whether the government will be favoring the highest bidders, or whether there will be other considerations: when operators bid for 3G spectrum in 2000, it raised £22.47 billion ($35 billion) for the government’s coffers.

What’s ironic with these delays is that there seems to be a clear sign from operators in the UK that they want to get the ball rolling with 4G.

This week, BT (NYSE: BT), working with Everything Everywhere (the JV between France Telecom’s Orange and Deutsche Telekom’s T-Mobile in the UK), kicked off services on an LTE trial in Cornwall that it announced back in May of this year. The trial covers some 200 households and focuses only on dongles to use with fixed and portable PCs rather than mobile devices.

It’s not clear whether collaboration between BT and Everything Everywhere will be on the cards in the commercial game as well, but Everything Everywhere today took one more step towards merging their networks more completely: the two announced that subscribers on the two networks will now be able to access each other’s 3G networks, which will improve overall coverage.

The Cornwall trial aims to show the government that LTE can be used in remote areas where building out fixed broadband would be cost-prohibitive. The government has earmarked £530 million ($829 million) in subsidies to build out broadband in remote areas — but of course if the funds are used for LTE, that could be useful to the operator for more than just remote-area coverage.

Although the UK government has set ambitious targets to be a leader in mobile broadband services in the region, other countries in Europe are quite a way further along the road to realizing 4G rollouts. At the end of September, Italy completed its 4G auction (raising nearly €4 billion); Germany and Spain have also completed their auctions; and France is in the process of allocating its spectrum. Meanwhile, Sweden already has 4G services in place.

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UPDATE: Literally as we published this post, Orange’s press office got back to us with confirmation of forthcoming subsidized plans and sent us this press release. Specific pricing isn’t mentioned, nor is a solid timeline, but it does make reference to “more affordable prices when purchased with a data service plan” for iPad Wi-Fi + 3G models arriving sometime in “the coming months.”

As we gear up for Black Friday discount deals, it looks like hopeful iPad shoppers might soon be getting an unusual price-break of their own, at least in the U.K. British site MarketingWeek is reporting that Orange and T-Mobile wireless ISP parent company Everything Everywhere has said it will announce plans today to offer the tablet device at a discount in exchange for a long-term contract.

The subsidized iPad (3G version) is expected to be available for around £200 (just under $320 at current exchange rates) for customers that are willing to sign an 18-24 month contract. An unsubsidized Wi-Fi + 3G iPad currently starts at £529 (~$844 U.S.). Orange and T-Mobile were both contacted for further comment, but neither company returned our inquiries in time for publication.

This move from full-price to subsidized discounts would mirror the iPhone’s pricing history. As you may remember, Apple’s first mobile device was originally offered with a hefty price tag, then discounted before being offered at an even lower price thanks to a subsidy from AT&T.

9to5Mac points out that O2, a competing UK mobile company, recently started offering a deal with Xbox/Playstation 3 models, so the iPad subsidy may be a move from Everything Everywhere to provide a similar deal of its own to attract new customers.

Could this contract-based discount also make its way to the U.S.? Unfortunately, we’re not currently hearing any news of the subsidy being on this side of the pond. But competition is heating up as wireless ISPs fight to offer the growing base of tablet customers their mobile data plans. Verizon and AT&T are now both vying for iPad data plan customers. If Apple allows it, there’s no reason why both wouldn’t jump at the chance to lock customers in to longer term plans here on this side of the pond, too. There’s already a price war being waged for Galaxy Tab customers. One focused on the iPad could soon follow.

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