Bharti Airtel crosses 300 million customers milestone

India’s largest telecom firm Bharti Airtel on Monday said it has crossed 300 million customers mark across its mobile, fixed line, DSL and DTH services.

Bharti Airtel, which began operations in 1995, reached the 100 million customers mark in 2009 and crossed the 200 million mark in 2012.

“The latest 100 million customers have joined the Airtel family in less than two years. The company ranks as the fourth largest mobile service provider globally and second largest globally outside of China,” Airtel said in a statement.

Bharti Airtel has operations in 20 countries across Asia and Africa.

“This milestone underlines strength of our operations, which is one of the largest on a global scale. Today, telecom is at the cusp of transformation, which, going forward will be driven as much by the force of technology as by the changing demographics in emerging markets across Asia and Africa,” Bharti Airtel Managing Director and CEO (India and South Asia) Gopal Vittal said. Accelerated data consumption by the youth is going to be the underlying story, he added.

“I am confident that Airtel will continue to be at the forefront of this future growth story and continue to delight customers by adding value to their lives,” he said.

Bharti Airtel is the largest telecom company in India by customers as well as revenue and was the first in the country to launch 4G services in 2012.

In Africa, Bharti Airtel is the largest mobile operator in the continent in terms of geographical footprint, which spans 17 countries with over 70 million customers.

Airtel’s mobile networks carry over 311 billion minutes of calls every quarter.

According to Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI), Bharti Airtel had 22.88 per cent share of the Indian wireless subscriber market at the end of May 2014.

It had over 208 million mobile phone subscribers, while the number of wireline users stood at 3,347,309 as on May 30, 2014.