The mobile phone industry will today call for Europe's regulators and governments to set aside a quarter of the radio spectrum released by the switch to digital television for extending mobile broadband services into rural and remote areas.

The call, by industry body the GSM Association at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, comes as European governments are deciding how to dispose of the so-called digital dividend.

In the UK, Ofcom has already been forced to rethink the way it will slice the spectrum up once the analogue TV signal is switched off in 2012, in order to bring its plans more in line with Europe.

The digital dividend is alongside the original spectrum that was granted to mobile phone companies when services first started in the 1980s and can carry mobile broadband over long distances, making it perfect for rural areas where fixed-line infrastructure is not up to the job.

In the UK, mobile phone companies are locked in a fight with Ofcom over the potential re-use of their existing spectrum. Until a resolution is reached, they will not know how much of the dividend they will need.

The communications minister, Lord Carter, has made getting broadband to everyone in the UK by 2012 a central plank of his plans for Digital Britain and is trying to broker an industry-led solution to the spectrum impasse.

If one cannot be reached by April, he has said he will impose a solution.

Last week, Ofcom announced that the imposed solution would be to remove a slice of the spectrum owned by the UK's two original mobile phone networks – O2 and Vodafone – and sell it to the highest bidder, with the government pocketing the cash.

The GSMA calculates 97 million people around the world are using mobile broadband and there will be a billion using it by 2012, but the growth relies upon the spectrum being made available.

"The mobile phone industry is calling for 25% of the digital dividend spectrum to be made available for the mobile industry," said the GSMA's chief marketing officer, Michael O'Hara. "It must be harmonised across Europe so we all have the same bit.

"If that spectrum is made available, this industry is ready to invest in new services to reach rural populations."