Bharati crosses 40 mln mobile customer milestone

Bangalore, May 23: Bharati Airtel, a leading private sector telecommunications service provider, has crossed 40 million mobile customer milestone.

Thus the company became the country's first mobile service provider and the 10th in the world to join an exclusive list of global telecom operators. The landmark customer base was achieved in just 12 years, making Bharati Airtel one of the fastest companies to make it to the exclusive list, according to a release here today.

The Company's overall wireless market share catapulted to over 23.2 per cent as of April 2007 from 20.4 per cent as reported in 2006.

Company President (Mobile Services) Sanjay Kapoor said that "the 40 million customer milestone was indeed a remarkable achievement not only for us but also for the country as it clearly underscores the coming of age of Indian companies in the international telecom arena." The Company proposes to aggressively roll out more than 30,000 cell sites by 2008 to increase its population coverage to 70 per cent. Currently, Airtel was present in nearly 4,700 census towns and over 200,000 non-census towns and villages covering 59 per cent of the population.

UNI