There is concern that too much money has been paid for the licences, leaving insufficient funds to build the networks. In the UK, network operators paid the government a total of £22.5 billion.
A suggestion that the governments should refund some of the costs to the operators has already been rejected on the basis that it would penalise those operators without licences because they dropped out of the bidding when the price became too high.
Hans Snook, former chief of Orange, has told BBC Online that he does not expect to see 3G fully in place until 2004, two years later than expected, but adds that he thinks 3G will become profitable for operators. He said that the price paid for the licences “will ultimately be seen as conservative once the true potential of these networks is realised.”