Not satiated with the government's move to review the expert committee recommendation on spectrum allocation, Cellular Operators Association of India moved TDSAT on Wednesday challenging the criteria adopted by Department of Telecommunication.

Members of COAI, including Bharti Airtel [Get Quote], Vodafone-Essar, Idea Cellular [Get Quote] and others met in New Delhi and decided to go ahead with filing of the affidavit in TDSAT against the Telecom Engineering Centre's report.

COAI has also questioned the government's move to allocate spectrum to two telecom PSUs -- BSNL and MTNL [Get Quote] -- saying they have been given frequency out of turn as many other players have been waiting to get spectrum for months and even years now.

Today's affidavit would widen the scope of COAI's original petition challenging DoT's decision to allow use of dual technology thereby permitting operators to offer mobile services using both technologies (GSM and CDMA) simultaneously in a same circle.

In the face of stiff opposition from the GSM lobby, which made several representations to the Communications Minister A Raja and also sought Prime Minister's Office intervention, the government on Tuesday announced to form a panel to look into the TEC report on spectrum allocation.

Earlier, Raja had informed the prime minister that TEC, a technical wing of DoT, has recommended a very scientific criteria for the allocation of spectrum and the same has been accepted in-principle by his ministry.

As per the TEC report, none of the existing GSM players would remain eligible to get additional spectrum as the body had recommended 4-15 times higher subscriber limit for additional spectrum.