NEW DELHI: Bids for the 3G auction continue to rise even on the 28th day, and stood at over Rs 144.66 billion after 157 rounds today, about 313 per cent more than the base price of Rs 35 billion.

But though there are applications for price increment for the main service centres, there are clear signs of slow down.

Mumbai continues to have the highest bid with Rs 26.62 billion, with Delhi at Rs 26.12 billion.
 
Karnataka closed at Rs 15.03 billion, Tamil Nadu at Rs 13.94 billion, the rest of Maharashtra at Rs 12.09 billion and Andhra Pradesh at Rs 11.95 billion. Gujarat closed at Rs 10.44 billion, West Uttar Pradesh went up to Rs 42.56 billion, and Kolkata clocked Rs 4.20 billion. East Uttar Pradesh rose to Rs 3.05 billion, Punjab at Rs 2.09 billion, Bihar to Rs 1.59 billion, Orissa went up to Rs 457.1 million, the North-East rose to Rs 361.5 million, and Assam went up to Rs 358 million.

The bids for Kerala, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Haryana, West Bengal, Jammu and Kashmir and Himachal Pradesh remained unchanged.  
 
With no applications for price increment for tomorrow, the bids for nine service centres are expected to slow down. These are Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Haryana, West Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, West Bengal, Himachal Pradesh, and Jammu and Kashmir. Some other service centres like Orissa, Assam and the North-East are also unlikely to see much increase with the price increment at Rs 45,000 or less.

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.