In spring 2000, the British government auctioned off licences for Third Generation mobile telecommunications services. In the preparation of the auction, two designs involving each a hybrid of an English and a sealed-bid auction were suggested by the government: a discriminatory and a uniform...

In this paper I review the Dutch UMTS-auction that took place in the summer of 2000 and which, in contrast to the UK and German auctions, was generally considered to be a major flop. I analyse the policy process leading to the auction as well as the bidding behaviour in the auction, and provide...

Because fourth-generation (4G) mobile communications services are provided over refarmed and heterogeneous bands for the first time, a unified spectrum management regime fails to accommodate the spectral heterogeneity. In Taiwan, we still extend the 2G incumbents’ usage right on the 900MHz and...

Inspired by some spectrum auctions, we consider a stylized license auction with incumbents and one entrant. Whereas the entrant values only the bundle of several units (synergy), incumbents are subject to non-increasing demand. The seller proactively encourages entry and restricts incumbent...

This paper considers bidder behaviour in the United Kingdom s UMTS spectrum auction. Evidence is reviewed which shows that some bidders in this auction did not bid straightforwardly in accordance with fixed valuations of the licenses. We go on to consider more speculative hypotheses about...

We briefly survey several insights about value and revenue maximization in multi-object auctions and apply them to the German (and Austrian) UMTS auction. In particular, we discuss in detail the exposure problem that caused firms in Germany to pay almost Euro 20 billion for nothing.

A Licensed Shared Access (LSA) "authorization/license" includes an agreement between the secondary sharing user (some type of operator) and the primary license holder (e.g. a government organization) around the conditions of use (where, when, how). Compared to secondary access LSA offers a more...

Competition policy attempts to address the potential for market failure by encouraging competition in service markets. Often, in wireless communication service markets, national regulatory authorities seek to encourage entry via the spectrum assignment process. Instruments used include the...