India's auction of third-generation (3G) bandwidth for mobile telephone services ended Wednesday, with final bids securing the government a windfall of close to 15 billion dollars. The provisional results were posted on the Department of Telecommunications website after 34 days of frenetic bidding that saw the price of a pan-India slot soar to more than 3.6 billion dollars - way beyond the reserve price.
Nine cellular firms, including Indian market leaders Bharti Airtel and Reliance Communications, had participated in more than 180 rounds of bidding. The provisional winning price for one slot of bandwidth to offer superfast 3G services across India was 168.2 billion rupees (3.6 billion dollars), from a starting bid price of 35 billion rupees.
None of the bidding firms won 3G mobile spectrum in all 22 service areas up for grabs, but Bharti Airtel, Reliance Communications and Vodafone Essar all won spectrum in the key Delhi and Mumbai areas. The government's provisional revenue from the sale was estimated at 677 billion rupees (14.6 billion dollars), which will go a long way to plug a yawning budget deficit.
The auction in the world's fastest-growing mobile market is seen as propelling India decisively into the Internet era. There are nearly half a billion mobile phone subscribers in India, only a fraction of whom have access to the Internet via computers. New 3G networks will give people fast access to the web from their handsets.
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