But the handover, which is expected to exceed £12bn, brings its own problems. It is the largest single transfer of cash from the private to the public sector, even though not all the successful bidders are being asked to pay up.
Two companies - Vodafone and Orange - have been allowed to delay payment, totalling about £10bn, until they demerge later this year.
The others - BT, One-2-One and TIW - which bid about £4bn each, have the option to delay half the payment to a later date.
But this is unlikely because of the relatively high interest rate charged by the government.
While the prospect of a multi-billion pound windfall is widely seen as a boom to government finances - chancellor Gordon Brown has pledged to use the money to pay off national debt - it has thrown a spanner in the Exchequer's budgeting works.
This has necessitated some highly unusual arrangements between the Treasury and the private sector.
Instead of all the money being paid directly to the Bank of England, accounts have been set up with private banks by the government's Debt Management Office (DMO).
The money will then be drawn down by the DMO, which is charged with managing a balance in government cash flow, from the individual accounts, over several weeks.
The idea, says Steve Whiting of the DMO, is to gradually absorb the impact of so much money changing hands.
Without the buffer, the private sector could be left seriously short of cash, causing all sorts of unforeseen problems.
"It would risk distortion of the market because the market would be short on cash and the government would be long on cash."
Still more efforts are being made to minimise the impact. On Tuesday morning, the DMO effectively leant £1bn back to the market in what is known as a "reverse repo tender".
The surge of cash has also raised questions about the DMO's planned issue of gilts - cast iron bonds sold by the Exchequer to raise money for the government.
In the long-term, this is seen as bad news for those who hold private pensions.
Private pension holders must buy an annuity - a fixed allowance - by the age of 75, which guarantees them an income until they die. Insurance companies rely heavily on gilts to fund annuities.
But, in recent years, healthy government finances have upset the gilts market.
The number of gilt bonds issued is sliding, as is the financial return on them. This has a knock-on effect on pensioners, who have seen the diminishing return mirrored in falling annuity returns.
Put simply, annuity-holders can expect a smaller income now than in the past.
The windfall money will further undermine the gilt market. It casts doubt on the DMO's plans to issue £12bn of new gilts in 2000-01, simply because the Treasury no longer needs to raise so much money.
All of which means that while Gordon Brown will not exactly be ruing his £22bn bonanza, big money brings big problems.