Mr. Alex Chisholm:

Brevity in this regard is a challenge because it has taken us four years to put the auction together. It was an immense and massively complex project to undertake, but I will attempt to give a brief overview. We received somewhere between 2,500 and 3,000 pages of submissions from interested parties, some of them written by those parties' law firms, others very technical submissions from economists and specialists. The aspiration we set for ourselves at the outset was to make the spectrum available on a very competitive and efficient basis. We sought to conduct a process that was very rigorous and robust and would withstand potential challenge, of which there was a potential risk. The objective was to have a great degree of certainty at the end of the process rather than getting mired in challenges or tribunals. We were anxious to ensure a truly commercial and competitive outcome, not one decided by excessive levels of administrative judgment. That was tremendously important in terms of our desire to ensure that the long-term structure of the mobile industry and the cost of using spectrum would be efficient and manageable. That will make a huge difference both to the quality and the cost of the mobile services on which we all depend so heavily.

We are very pleased that at the end of what was admittedly a drawn-out process which has involved 14 consultations thus far, we had the tremendous auction result which we announced in November. The outturn of €850 million probably exceeded all expectations in terms of financial outcome. Equally positive, and just as important, was that there were four major winners of spectrum, all of which have declared themselves pleased with the results they achieved and have indicated their intention to roll out very fast mobile broadband services with enhanced capabilities to their customers. It is a very positive outcome to what has been a long and painful road for us and for the other parties involved.