The ride towards completion of the £15 billion ($20.1 billion) merger between Vodafone and Three has been relatively smooth, considering its scale and consequences for the UK market. This is partly because it is drawn by a magnetism towards convergence that is already well established in some other markets. There is inevitably a balance to be struck between competition and consolidation in a field governed by high upfront costs against a finite resource in spectrum. Over the last decade that balance has tended to reduce the number of operators, compensated in some cases by reallocations of spectrum, or other measures. In India, most notably, 6 operators have been whittled to three over the last decade, and of these, Reliance Jio…