FM Phase lll e-auctions Day 2: Metros gain; no bidders for smaller cities

Eight rounds of bidding for Phase lll are over. The second day report put forth by Ministry of Information and Broadcasting on its website shows some interesting but perhaps predictable trends. While bids for most small towns remained more or less same as they were the day before, metro bids saw big jumps, Mumbai led the way in absolute numbers, Delhi too saw high percentage jump:

Cities	Channels available     for bidding	Provisional Winning Price (In INR) at end of Round 8	Provisional Winning Price (In INR) at end of Round 8	Excess  demand –     day1	Excess Demand – day 2
Mumbai	2	41,91,27,594.00	55,43,79,061.00	4	3
Delhi	1	37,41,17,940.00	48,10,99,208.00	4	4
Bangalore	1	25,00,47,000.00	30,39,33,689.00	2	3
Chennai	1	14,20,40,587.00	17,26,51,219.00	2	3

Other cities with provisional bid amounts in excess to Rs 10 crore on day 2 include: Ahmedabad (16,89,29,439.00), with excess demand of 3 for a single channel available,  Hyderabad (18,00,00,000.00) with three bidders for its four channels,  Lucknow (14,00,55,000) with only one bidder for three available channels, Pune (19,70,71,446.00) four bidders for its two available channels

Among the major cities that saw no qualifying bids include Chandigarh (base price: 15,76,61,595.00), Cochin (10,32,03,505.00) and Varanasi (2,14,22,100.00).

There are a few small cities which have not seen any bidding interest so far. The ones that caught attention among these are Asansol, Gulbarga, Mangalore, Mysore (surprise!), Puducherry, Siligury, Surat, Tirupati and Vijayawada.