Vodafone subscribers can avail cashback of Rs 1,500 on the purchase of Galaxy J2 Pro, Galaxy J7 Nxt or Galaxy J7 Max devices. The cash back will be credited to their Vodafone M-Pesa wallets.

Idea’s consolidated loss went up from Rs 328 crore for the three months ended March 31, 2017, to Rs 1,107 crore for the September quarter — thanks to increased competition from Reliance Jio, which is offering free voice calls to its customers.

The Street is watching with trepidation the timelines for the merger, which are critical to prevent further erosion in market share and Ebitda of Idea Cellular. The businesses of both Vodafone-Idea has deteriorated since the merger announcement three quarters back.

“Management expects all approvals for the merger to come in by March/April 2018,” Bank of America-Merrill Lynch said in a note, citing its recent meeting with the Idea Cellular leadership. ET has seen a copy of this note.

The telecom department had asked the operators to make their presentation by December 6. However, Bharti Airtel and Idea Cellular have raised a request to defer the meeting and Vodafone has not yet responded, according ot a senior DoT official quoted in the Livemint report.

Although Bharti Airtel has been adding customers regularly barring an odd month when the telco lost users, Vodafone and Idea Cellular have been losing subscribers for the past few months, causing their base to shrink a little.

For one, this is far higher than the maximum leverage ratio the two companies envisaged when they agreed on merger terms. Both companies are to ensure that at the closing of the merger, its leverage ratio isn’t higher than an agreed upon “maximum closing leverage ratio” (MCLR).