All regular and permanent employees of BSNL who attended the age of 50 years or above are eligible to seek voluntary retirement under the VRS scheme

A three-member NCLAT bench, headed by Chairperson Justice S J Mukhopadhaya, said a secured creditor cannot dissent with the resolution plan just to get more funds than other creditors and claim preference over other creditors

There will only be four players soon - Reliance Jio, Vodafone Idea, Bharti Airtel and BSNL/MTNL - as opposed to around a dozen in March 2016, according to a TRAI report

Vodafone Group says it'll not commit any more equity to India and that the country effectively contributed zero value to the company's share price

Department of Telecommunications (DoT) has directed BSNL to ensure measures to maintain business continuity and smooth transition, especially to operate telephone exchanges in rural areas

Meetings are on to find a solution to ensure there is no impact on day-to-day manning of exchanges and other operations, once the BSNL VRS plan concludes

BSNL is looking at savings of about Rs 7,000 crore in wage bill, considering anywhere between 70,000-80,000 personnel opt for it

Although Jio has said that the rival telcos have financial strength to pay AGR dues of over Rs 92,000 crore, it also said that the failure of its rival operators will not have an impact on the sector dynamics.

All regular and permanent employees of 50 years and above as on January 31, 2020 are eligible to opt for the voluntary retirement scheme

Ravi Shankar Prasad also asked the telecom operators to monetise assets in a time-bound manner and stated that they have to be more aggressive in the telecom market.

Apart from the merger, the government has announced a host of measures to revive the debt-ridden companies, which include administrative allocation of spectrum for 4G services, debt restructuring, reducing employee costs through VRS, and asset monetisation plan