Sir, - "Telecoms operators will compete for third generation mobile phone licences through a "beauty contest" rather than a UK-style auction, which may have resulted in high prices for consumers, telecoms regulator Ms Etain Doyle has decided" (The Irish Times, July 27th).
This is a scandal. When "beauty" not money will determine who wins, the scope for corruption is obvious. (How will the politicians quantify "beauty"?), and this at a time when the Flood and Moriarty tribunals continue to expose the rampant corruption of Irish politicians.
Moreover, the airwaves being sold belong to the Irish people not to Ms Doyle and not (yet) to the telecoms company. As such, she has no right to extract other than the maximum price that the market can bear. Failure to do so means tax revenue foregone and therefore an unnecessary extra tax burden on long-suffering taxpayers. Bidders will not bid more than they believe their future customers will be willing to pay for the service - but that is bidders' risk not Ms Doyle's or the Irish taxpayers'.
The "beauty" approach is the lazy approach of someone who can't be bothered to spell out exactly what is being sold, to quantify in hard money terms the manner in which bids are to be evaluated and to seek to maximise revenue. No successful, honest, commercial business would evaluate a tender in such a way.
Who regulates the telecoms regulator? - Yours, etc.,
Tony Allwright, Killiney, Co Dublin.