NEW DELHI: By the end of the third day of the 3G auction, a total of 16 rounds were completed.
The price for Delhi service area rose to Rs 4.16 billion in the bidding, much more than the round price for Mumbai service area, which was at Rs 3.96 billion after the 16 clock rounds.
Even the rest of Maharashtra service area attracted the bid price of Rs 4.04 billion at the end of day three, higher than Mumbai.
The bid for Gujarat rose to Rs 4.16 billion, marginally lower than Delhi, while the rest of Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu clocked a bid of Rs 4.04 billion.
Meanwhile, waiting for bidders so far, Assam, Orissa and Jammu & Kashmir service areas opened their accounts with bids worth Rs 300 million each after the 16th round.
The telecom operators in the race are Aircel, Bharti Airtel, Etisalat DB Telecom, Idea Cellular, Reliance, S Tel, Tata Teleservices, Videocon Telecommunications and Vodafone Essar.
The successful bidders would be allowed to start commercial 3G operations from 1 September.
However, bidding for broadband and wireless access (BWA) auction did not commence today as the 3G auction is expected to go into a few more rounds.
A total of 11 telecom companies- Aircel Ltd, Augere (Mauritius), Bharti Airtel, Idea Cellular, Infotel Broadband Services, Qualcomm, Reliance WiMax, Spice Internet Service Provider, Tata Communications Internet Services, Tikona Digital Networks and Vodafone Essar - have qualified for the BWA auction, according to the Department of Telecommunications (DoT).