Concerned over rising consumer complaints, United Kingdom communications regulator Ofcom on Thursday began a public debate on what could become the country's first major overhaul of its mobile industry regulations in almost a decade.

The agency invited public comment on how it should change its regulations to keep up with the industry's rapid growth, and how it can best promote competition and innovation at a time when mobile service usage is well past the saturation point.

Industry analysts have complained that despite soaring usage numbers, mobile service prices in the U.K. are far too high and that has caused the U.K. to lag behind other developed countries in terms of innovation and service quality.

“The time for new regulations in the U.K. is long overdue and you can see that in the fact that other developed countries are far ahead in terms of fixed-mobile converged services and the mobile Internet,” said Moe Tanabian, a principal with IBB Consulting.

And the sudden emergence of the mobile Internet late last year has brought its own set of problems, according to Mike Grant, a partner at London-based Analysys Mason, which has filed an Ofcom-commissioned report on the subject.

“A fundamental change in the last nine month is the number of people connecting their PCs to the Internet using the mobile network, and that has fueled a dramatic increase in mobile network traffic,” Mr. Grant said.

Since PC/mobile connections started showing up, some carriers claim that traffic on their networks have increased as much as sevenfold.

“Now the operators have to invest in infrastructure to carry that growing data traffic, and developing a network for data is a lot different than doing it for voice,” he said.

But in 2007 the U.K.'s five mobile operators generated $27.5 billion in revenue, more than fixed voice, broadband, and corporate data put together.

Mobile phone usage in the U.K. has grown well past the nominal saturation point. With a population of 60 million, the U.K. now has more than 70 million mobile phone subscriptions.

Still there are extensive dead zones particularly in the countryside, and many areas that are served by fewer than the country's five operators, according to Ofcom.

The imbalance between urban and rural areas is even more pronounced in 3G data coverage, with parts of Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland, having poorer coverage than the U.K. average.