NEW DELHI: Bids for the 3G auction continue to rise even after 26 days, and stood at Rs 134.74 billion after 148 rounds, almost Rs 100 billion more than the base price of Rs 35 billion.

However, there are clear signs of slow down with applications for price increment for the first round tomorrow coming down to Rs 243 million from Rs 400 million last week for Mumbai, which has so far attracted the highest bid and today stood at Rs 24.34 billion as against Rs 23.73 billion for Delhi.
 
Karnataka closed at Rs 14.02 billion, Tamil Nadu at Rs 12.87 billion, the rest of Maharashtra at 11.50 billion, and Andhra Pradesh at Rs 11.14 billion. Gujarat closed at Rs 10.34 billion, West Uttar Pradesh went up to Rs 3.93 billion, and Kolkata clocked Rs 3.84 billion. East Uttar Pradesh rose to Rs 2.84 billion, Punjab closed at Rs 1.93 billion, Bihar rose to Rs 1.07 billion, Orissa went up to Rs 402.4 million, the North-East rose to Rs 330.9 million, and Assam went up to Rs 327.7 million

The bids for Kerala, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Haryana, West Bengal, Jammu and Kashmir and Himachal Pradesh remained unchanged. And with no applications for price increment for tomorrow, the bids for some service centres are expected to slow down 
 
The telecom operators in the race are Aircel, Bharti Airtel, Etisalat DB Telecom, Idea Cellular, Reliance, S Tel, Tata Teleservices, Videocon Telecommunications and Vodafone Essar.

The successful bidders would be allowed to start commercial 3G operations from 1 September.