With Aircel filing for bankruptcy on Wednesday, the last of the small telecom companies is out of the way. It leaves the behemoths—Bharti Airtel, Vodafone-Idea and Reliance Jio—to slug it out. Late last year, telecom secretary Aruna Sundararajan said 2017 had been a year of consolidation for the sector, while 2018 would be a year of growth. She was certainly right with regard to the former; the disruption caused by Reliance Jio’s entry has led to a wave of telecom mergers. But there are several caveats when it comes to the latter. Source
India’s telecom industry: Survival of the fittest
March 5, 2018