Bharti Airtel crosses 300 million milestone

The customer count includes mobile, fixed line, DSL and DTH services

Bharti Airtel, the country's largest cellular operator, has crossed 300 million customers mark across its mobile, fixed line, DSL and DTH services, the company said in a statement on Monday.

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 in a statement.

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 more than 311 billion minutes of calls every quarter.

According to Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai), Bharti Airtel had 22.88% share of the Indian wireless subscriber market at the end of May 2014, with about 208 million mobile phone subscribers and 3.3 million wireline users in India.