Vodafone India, to post losses of $4 billion and eventually merge with the No. 3 player, Idea Cellular, to create a new entity Vodafone Idea, the biggest player in the business today. After the shake-out, the three main players—Ambani, Mittal, and Birla—together control sector assets worth over 5 lakh crore and are expected to sink ₹50,000 crore each year to expand their businesses. "You can say that the silver lining in all this is the painful but quick consolidation which has left the market with fewer players like in more mature markets.Now capital and resources can be deployed more efficiently by the sector unlike when there were a dozen players," says Cellular Opera-tors Association of India (COAI) director general Rajan Mathews. A fierce advocate of the established players, Mathews was sued by Reliance this year for defamation as the COAI issued press statements questioning the legality of Jio's entry into the business.