Everyone was putting a brave face on the outcome of the UK auction for third generation mobile phones. After all, what else can you do when you have spent eight weeks and more than £4 billion sterling over 150 bidding rounds securing the right to spend roughly the same again providing an advanced Internet-friendly mobile phone network.

Still the only true winner was Gordon Brown who netted £22.5 billion sterling - more than seven times the most optimistic early estimates of the value of the licences - without having to sell the family silver, making it the most successful of all British privatisations. The sheer madness of the auction was clear from the fact the TIW UMTS consortium, which won the largest licence reserved for new entrants to the market and coveted by Eircom among others, is higher than its own market capitalisation.

At least, Hutchison Whampoa, the major player in the consortium, knows the market; it owned existing operator and another successful bidder, Orange, before selling it to Mannesmann.