Bids for an all-India license to offer 3G services reached Rs 9,500-crore mark on the 18th day of  auction. The provisional winning price for a pan-India licence stood at Rs 9,521.02 crore, up 172.03 per cent from the Rs 3,500 crore reserve price fixed by the government.

As per the details given by the Department of Telecommunications (DoT), four more Clock Rounds were completed on  Friday. With this, the total number of Clock Rounds completed to date has come to 104. This means that almost 90 per cent of 3G auction is completed, and with just 10 per cent activity left the auction is expected to conclude early next week.

The 3g auction started on April 9 and is still underway. Auction for BWA will start after two days of the close of  3G auction.

Mumbai and Delhi continued to be among the most sought-after circles with highest bids of Rs15bn and Rs14.5bn, respectively.

Nine mobile-phone carriers including Vodafone Group Plc, the world’s largest, and Bharti Airtel Ltd., India’s biggest, are vying for the spectrum to offer third-generation services in the world’s second-largest wireless market by subscribers.

The government is auctioning spectrum for operating 3G services in India’s 22 designated telephone zones. It plans to sell 93 licenses to provide high-speed data to mobile phones and computers that may raise an estimated 500 billion rupees, helping reduce the nation’s fiscal deficit.

See DoT notification for more update.