
The Sale of the British 3G Telecom Licenses (2002) [pdf] - spiritus_
http://www.nuff.ox.ac.uk/users/klemperer/biggestpaper.pdf
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anexprogrammer
Of course immediately after the "successful" auction telecoms couldn't afford
to do anything with the acquired licence and telecoms went into recession.

3G rollout and services took a ridiculous time to arrive.

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k__
Same in Germany.

The market for mobile Internet access here still suffers from this...

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Accacin
Intestingly (I think) the UK was very slow in adopting 3G, but 4G has come a
lot more quickly and I believe we're one of the countries with the higher
average 4G speeds now.

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martinald
That's not true at all. 3UK had one of the world's first operational 3G
services.

4G LTE rollout in the UK was and is painfully slow. The only good thing was
that a lot of networks had very good coverage of HSPA+ and DC-HSPDA which is
pretty close to LTE responsiveness in day to day use.

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throwawayReply
From a technical perspective, yes the UK had early 3G, however uptake was slow
compared to 4g.

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dx034
Very misleading title, especially for a scientific paper. While it was the
biggest auction up to that date, a similar auction in Germany just a few
months later had a significantly higher revenue, nearly twice as much as the
British auction. [0] The paper was published in 2002, so the title was already
incorrect when it was published.

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spectrum_auction#Germany](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spectrum_auction#Germany)

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neals
And after that, hopes for a big auction at your friendly neighborhood the
Netherlands where high! Expecting similar numbers, the action became a big
flop with just under 2.5bil euro's.

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londons_explore
I don't understand why the licenses seem to be 'forever'. Surely a 25 year
license which is then sold again at auction would have been a better design.

The 'forever' licenses also can't be resold (although the entire company
owning them can merge). That means if in the future another technology which
completes with 3G so incumbents don't want to get involved comes along and
could make great use of that spectrum, it won't get use.

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nicky0
The article mentions that there licences were to last only until 2021. Not
sure what happens in 2021 though.

Edit: after a bit of googling it looks like the licences will be re-tendered
in 2021

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duncanawoods
I saw a talk by Ken Binmore, the organiser of the auction and author of the
paper.

He found it very funny how each participant turned up with teams of Nobel
prize winning economists and mathematicians.

He said the correct way to approach such an auction is to decide up front what
the value is to you and then bid up to but not beyond that figure. That is
all. There are plenty of foolish things you can do but nothing better.

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chriswarbo
> decide up front what the value is to you

That's the tricky part ;)

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jvvw
I remember that the designer of the auction did various mock auctions
beforehand getting maths PhD students to do the bidding pretending to be the
various mobile companies. I was a postdoc at the time and didn't take part
myself but some of my friends did.

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ejz
_ahem_ [http://www.reuters.com/article/us-fcc-auction-
idUSKCN0ZV2C3](http://www.reuters.com/article/us-fcc-auction-idUSKCN0ZV2C3)

With respects paid to Paul Milgrom who designed this auction!

