This came as a surprise to everyone. Reliance Industries has not put in an application to bid for the upcoming 2G spectrum sale.

Sistema is another big player which is not going to participate in the bidding process. The company who have submitted applications are: Airtel, Vodafone, Videocon and Tata Teleservices.

Reliance was very much expected to participate to get the necessary licenses and spectrum for mobile voice telephony to support their upcoming 4G LTE network launch.

It is not clear what exactly they are planning because they would need to offer mobile services if they want to attract more consumers to their wireless internet services.

Industry analysts believe that Videocon might eventually partner with Reliance and we might see some sort of a merger between the two companies. This leads to the rumors that Videocon might end up bidding as a proxy for Reliance. But nothing is clear right now.