India is one of the largest mobile subscriber markets in the world, and on April 9th, bidding for the 3G slots started. Two slots are already been awarded to the government agencies MTNL and BSNL, with essentially 3 other slots available. Obviously, the emergence of 3G networks in India, which would be set to start on September 1st for these bidders, means infrastructure spending also has to follow to install the 3G networks. So there is a lot at stake here with regards to the bids and pricing as the winners will need to monetize their win over time. It will be interesting to see how they go about this, but obviously data and multimedia/video traffic and applications will be key parts. With huge subscriber growth per month in India, the 3G networks also will play a key role in simply having bandwidth available for subscriber growth. So the 2G networks will play a key role for some time, likely for the lower ARPU customer base. However, I'm also sure other kinds of business models will emerge in India.
In terms of this auction, it seems to me that the government sets the price, and bidders either OK it or reject it. And based on that, the price goes up or down. If you go to http://dot.gov.in you will see the state sponsored website. If you click on the "auction update" button, you will see a daily report for the different regions.
Above that, you'll see something called "Spectrum Auction" and then if you click on that, it takes you to some interesting information, such as the list of bidders. The bidders include Aircel, Bharti Airtel, Etisalat, Idea Cellar, Reliance Telecom, S Tel, Tata Teleservices Videocon and Vodafone.
