India’s largest mobile operator, Bharti Airtel, is among the leading names to have criticised India’s 3G auctions, which finished yesterday without any operators securing nationwide spectrum. “The auction format and severe spectrum shortage along with ensuing policy uncertainty drove the prices beyond reasonable levels,” said Bharti, according to a Financial Times report. “As a result, we could not achieve our objective of a pan-India 3G footprint in this round.”

Bharti paid INR123 billion (US$2.7 billion) for spectrum in 13 of India’s regions, while second-placed Vodafone bought spectrum in nine regions for INR116.2 billion and third-placed Reliance Communications spent INR85.9 billion buying spectrum in 13 regions. However, no operator was prepared to meet the cost of acquiring a nationwide 3G footprint, which would have cost around US$3.6 billion. Nevertheless, the auctions still fetched prices well beyond analysts’ estimates, raising INR677.2 billion (US$14.5 billion) in total for the Indian government. The auction ended after 34 days and 183 rounds.

As none of the large operators were able to acquire nationwide 3G spectrum, analysts predict that firms will need to forge roaming agreements with each other to improve coverage. Nationwide coverage could also be achieved if the Indian government moves to relax rules that prohibit industry consolidation, which could enable large operators to improve their spectrum holdings by buying rivals. Following the completion of the auctions, the government is now under pressure to allow consolidation to ease the fierce price war currently raging between the country’s 15 mobile networks.

Vodafone wrote down the value of its Indian business by more than 25 percent on Tuesday because of the competition. Its CEO, Vittorio Colao, has also criticised the auction process. “Spectrum should not be seen as something that the government must use to squeeze money out of private capital,” he said earlier this week.

Research this week by Coleago Consuting found that the prices paid for spectrum in key metro areas such as Mumbai were on a par with the 3G licenses sold-off in countries such as the UK and Germany at the height of the dotcom boom a decade ago. “If the prices were adjusted for the relative differences in GDP per capita the Indian prices would be off the scale,” the firm said in an emailed statement.

Read the official DoT statement here