Others disagree and say the auction has fuelled a potentially crippling bid battle. It is down to emotion and whether you can afford to lose. The licences are important because they will become the main way of providing mobile-phone services. But it's becoming an act of faith that you will ever be able to recover the costs. It is an act of faith mobile operators have to make, says Christian Maher, telecoms analyst at Investec Henderson Crosthwaite.
Mobile phones are now part of the fabric of our lives.
More than 3m handsets were bought in the last three months of 1999. This weekend analysts are predicting that none of the existing operators will fall out of the battle because they do not feel they can afford to. But the spending will not stop even when the licences are won. Close Brothers reckons it will take 20 years for investments in 3G to be recouped. Orange is the smallest existing player battling for a licence.