Bharti Airtel becomes world's 4th largest mobile operator

Overtakes Spain's Telefonica, is now only behind China Mobile, Vodafone and America Movil

Bharti Airtel, India’s largest telecom operator has overtaken Spain’s Telefónica to become the world’s fourth-largest operator in terms of subscribers.

According to the ‘Scoreboard’ report by analyst firm Wireless Intelligence, the company had over 250 million mobile subscribers at the end of the quarter ended June 2012, representing a year-on-year growth of 13 per cent. This was the highest subscribers’ growth among the top five operators globally.

“India’s Bharti Airtel was the only other member of the top ten to move up the ranking, recording a 13 percent year-on-year rise in connections (to 250 million) and leapfrogging Telefónica to become the world’s fourth-largest operator group in the Q2,” the report said.

It, however, added that Bharti Airtel's $3.04 billion in mobile revenue in Q2 2012 was significantly lower than the four other operators in the top five, “reflecting Bharti's presence in the ultra low-cost, low-margin Indian and African markets.”

In June 2010, Bharti Airtel became the fifth largest mobile operator in the world following its acquisition of Zain Group’s mobile operations across 15 African nations.

According to the report, there were three other Indian telecom operators in the top 20 list apart from Bharti Airtel. Reliance Communications with 154.60 million subscribers held the 8th position while Idea Cellular ranked 14th position globally with a subscriber base of 117.16 million. State-run BSNL ranked 20th with 98.28 million subscribers at the end of June 2012.

The report said all the three telecom operators in China reported double digit growth in subscriber base in the Q2. China Mobile extended its lead as the world’s largest operator group with an 11 per cent YoY growth in the subscriber base to 683.1 million.