Tata Teleservices’s troubles do not seem to get over. After the pulling out of Japanese firm NTT Docomo and the continuing court case, and with reports about employees being laid off by the struggling telecom operator, the entry of Reliance Jio has proved to be detrimental to the company.

This week, according to a media report, Tata Teleservices has laid off 500-600 people. The layoffs are across locations and employees have been offered one month’s salary for the number of years they have worked with the telecom operator as the severance package. The cause is being attributed to the tough competition in the Telecom industry with the slashing of service rates for the consumers by Reliance Jio. 

The Telecom Industry is currently facing a debt of 4.6 lacs crore, as nearly all major telecom operators struggle to cut costs and offer quality services at reduced prices due to competition.

Consequently, this also led to the merger of Aditya Birla Group’s Idea and British telecom company Vodafone. Recently, there have also been reports of Reliance Jio merging with Tata Teleservices, which currently has a debt of about 30,000 crore, the burden which Reliance Jio is unlikely to share completely.

However, the talks regarding the merger are in progress. If the talks come through, then the merged entity would be the third largest in size after Idea-Vodafone and Bharti Airtel, which also has reportedly acquired Telenor India to increase its customer base.

Tata Teleservices which currently operates in 19 telecom circles has 51.2 million subscribers as of 28th February, 2017, and market share of 4.4% according to Telecom Authority of India. The total size of the industry in terms of the number of subscribers stands at 1.16 billion.