Ending a 20-year-old saga of mounting losses, Tata Teleservices will merge its consumer mobile businesses with Bharti Airtel in a cashless deal. Under the deal, Airtel will get access to 178 MHz of additional spectrum and 40 million subscribers. Airtel is not paying anything to Tata Tele other than absorbing a substantial number of the 5,000 employees and paying part of the spectrum liability that the latter owes to the Department of Telecom.