Airtel is now the third largest mobile operator in the world
View(s):Bharti Airtel (Airtel), a leading telecommunications service provider with operations in 20 countries across South Asia and Africa, said this week that it has become the third largest mobile operator in the world in terms of subscribers. As per the latest data published by World Cellular Information Service (WCIS), Airtel with over 303 million mobile subscribers across its operations, has moved up one position in the global rankings.
In a media release issued through its Colombo office, Airtel said it began operations in November 1995 in New Delhi and in less than two decades has emerged as one of the top brands in the emerging markets with an unmatched scale and diversity of operations.
The company pioneered the low-cost business model based on outsourcing that has allowed it to expand its services rapidly and give customers affordable access to mobile telephony. The top five global mobile operators in terms of connections are China Mobile – 626.27 million, Vodafone Group – 403.08 million, Bharti Airtel – 303.10 million, China Unicom – 299.09 million and America Movil – 274.14 million, according to WCIS data.
Sunil Bharti Mittal, Chairman, Bharti Airtel, said, “This is a major landmark in the journey of Airtel and underlines the strength of our business model and our brand that is loved by customers across 20 countries. I want to thank our employees and our business partners for supporting us through this exciting journey and with the mobile Internet play about to happen in the developing world, things will only get brighter from here on”.
Airtel’s mobile networks cover over 1.85 billion people in operations across 20 countries and carried over 1.23 trillion minutes of calls and over 333 petabytes of data in FY 2014-15.In India, Airtel has one of the largest bouquet of mobile services offerings for customers – including 2G, 3G, 4G, Mobile Commerce and other Value Added Services.
In Sri Lanka, Bharti Airtel offers a range of mobile services which includes voice, data and enterprise solutions on its state-of-the-art 2G and 3G HSPA+ network.