A. Raja, Minister of Communications, who belongs to the DMK,  has already ruled out auctioning of 2G spectrum because of likely legal challenges. He prefers to allocate spectrum on first come first served basis. He has also told the  Ministry of  Finance that a change in the licence fees cannot be considered by citing a cabinet decision of 2003 and he has rejected the suggestion fro setting up a GOM.

Instead, Raja is getting ready to issue new licences , The DOT has sent a letter to all companies which applied before September 25, for detailed clarifications and supporting documents.  As many as 46 companies have put in a total of 575 applications for telecom licences,  The applicants include a clutch of  domestic and  foreign players such as DLF, HFCL, Parsavnath, Unitech and AT&T  . The DOT might well issue LOIs to all eligible applicants  and then wait to see how many pay up the licence fees. Meanwhile, Bharti has offered to pay s 2650 crore for a pan India GSM spectrum of 4.4 Mhz –a premium of Rs 1000 crores over the current rate.