India's 3G auction - Better late then never

Bidding in the the Indian 3G auction has now reached upwards of $10 billion. Its taken the government four years to get here (see my Oct 31, 2006 op-ed in the Economic Times), but better late than never.

In Sep. of 06 I had made a presentation to the Telecom Regulatory of India (TRAI) on the benefits of using an auction mechanism for selling the spectrum. This had not been done in the past in India and from what I could surmise, they were leaning towards a beauty contest. Subsequently, I wrote an op-ed in the Economic Times that got published on Oct. 31 2006.

The big question is how are these funds to be utilized? My colleague and friend Prof. Arun Sundararajan and I opined on this in the summer of 2007 with Knowledge@Wharton.