The Swiss UMTS Spectrum Auction Flop: Bad Luck or Bad Design

This paper gives an account of events, and explains some system-atic reasons of the Swiss UMTS auction flop. Apart from general market developments, which could not have been anticipated, we argue that the English auction design is a cause of the disappointing performance of many UMTS auctions in Europe, of which Switzer-land is just one particularly pronounced example. The regulator would have been better advised to import some key ingredients of the auction design employed in Germany. This would have assured higher revenue or more competition. The paper closes with some major proposals on how one should conduct future spectrum auc-tions