Should have sold to Meralli. He knows how to work such deals.

REALLY?? havent heard about this deal in the office.

Prepare for hard times ahead especially if you aint a techie.

If you ask me, Airtel got shafted. And they will notice that sooner rather than later! A majority of Yu subscribers use the Yu line as their SECONDARY line mainly for the freebies - free calls etc. Unless Airtel a planning to continue giving them these freebies - that were costing Yu 3 BILLION every year, that 2.7 million will become 1 million in under a year. And then the remaining 1 million will be lost slowly but surely.

Such a deal would only make sense if a majority of Yu subscribers had the line as a primary line and could not migrate to another provider with the same number! What stops a Yu subscriber migrating a day after being "bought"?

I will not be suprised if Safaricom [and Orange] launch an aggressive MIGRATION campaign in a few weeks - complete with goodies - discounts, free airtime, migrate ubanjuke na millioni etc. Watch this space!

Safcom can afford to buy both the infrastructure and subscribers [prefix] - easy! Why didn't they??? They knew they could get them for free and some of them already have a Safcom line as their primary line anyway! I suspect the subscribers were offered to Airtel AFTER Safcom REFUSED to 'buy' them.

And I don't think it has anything to do with fair competition rules. The two major players ganging up to buy the third major player is worse than the major player buying the third major player. The former might even be characterized as cartel like behaviour!!!