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Bharti Airtel, a leading telecommunications service provider with operations in 20 countries across South Asia and Africa, said that it has become the third largest mobile operator in the world in terms of subscribers. As per the latest data published by WCIS, Airtel with over 303 million mobile subscribers across its operations, has moved up one position in the global rankings.
Airtel began operations in November 1995 in New Delhi (India) and in less than two decades it 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.
Bharti Airtel Chairman Sunil Bharti Mittal 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. Today, we seamlessly manage global scale operations in diverse geographies and deliver the same world-class services to each customers, this perhaps is one of our biggest achievements. 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 across its operations in 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. Its distribution channel is spread across 1.5 m outlets, with network presence in 5,121 census and 464,045 non-census towns and villages in India covering approximately 86.8% of the country’s population. Airtel has the largest rural mobile customer base in India with over 100 million mobile customers (from rural markets).
Airtel has India’s widest 3G footprint, offering customers high-speed internet access and a host of innovative services like Mobile TV, video calls, live-streaming videos and gaming. Airtel is the only mobile operator in India to offer 4G services in over 30 cities using TD – LTE and FDD – LTE technology, providing customers the fastest wireless services with buffer-less HD video streaming and multi-tasking capabilities. Going forward, Airtel plans to launch ultrafast 4G services in India’s first FDD‐LTE on 1800 MHz in six circles.
In Africa, Bharti Airtel is the largest mobile operator in the Continent in terms of geographical footprint. It offers 2G, 3G services and Airtel Money across all 17 countries in Africa. Airtel Money is one of the largest and fastest growing m-commerce services on the continent and with data adoption leading the growth on the continent, Airtel is well positioned to leverage the opportunities.
In Bangladesh, Bharti Airtel is the fastest growing mobile operator, with a distribution network comprising over 146K retailers across the country. The company offers a wide range of 2G and 3G services in Bangladesh, including voice, value added services, entertainment, m-commerce and m-health.
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. Airtel’s 3G presence across over 70% of its network is amongst the highest 3G ratio available across the subcontinent.
MUMBAI/FRANKFURT (Reuters): Network equipment maker Nokia has signed up India’s largest mobile operator Bharti Airtel to supply it with 3G wireless network gear covering some of the most populous regions in India, the Finnish company said on Tuesday.
Nokia Networks said it will supply radio antennas, hardware, software and network management and planning services for five large areas of India, as well as network expansion in three sub-regions where the two companies had existing contracts, or eight out of India’s 22 telecom sub-regions.
Financial terms were not disclosed. However, A Nokia spokeswoman confirmed the expanded supply deals include equipment to run networks in three of India’s four most populous states, which include major cities Mumbai and Kolkata.
The Asia-Pacific region outside China represented one-third of Nokia’s Network worldwide business sales of 2.67 billion euros ($ 3 billion) during the first quarter of 2015, making it the largest contributor to the company’s results.
India has been Nokia’s best performing market in terms of sales in recent quarters, offsetting weakness in North America, Europe, Japan, some parts of Southeast Asia, as well as China, which while growing quickly, has undercut profit margins.
In April, Nokia announced a 15.6 billion-euro takeover of Alcatel Lucent, a combination that will create the world’s second-largest mobile network gear supplier behind Ericsson of Sweden. ($ 1 = 0.8945 euros)
