An analysis of the licensing process for third‐generation mobile communications

Abstract

The licensing process for third‐generation mobile communications (3G) is largely complete in Europe although much less progress has been made elsewhere in the world. This process has been controversial, especially in relation to the use of auctions rather than so‐called “beauty contests”, and the purpose of this article is to analyse what processes have been used, in which countries, and to what effect. For this purpose, the analysis is split up into a series of successive time periods with each examined individually to discover what lessons could have been learned, followed by a concluding section which argues that while the choice of process was important, the failure in many cases to learn from experience was a prime determining factor of whether the process was a success or failure.