By IANS,
New Delhi : Leading telecom operator Bharti Airtel Friday said its mobile phone subscriber base had crossed the 100-million mark, making the company the third largest single country service provider in the world.
“Bharti Airtel has achieved 100-million subscriber mark,” said a beaming Sunil Bharti Mittal, chairman of the Rs.375 billion company. “This milestone reiterates the emergence of India as the world’s top telecom markets,” he told a press conference here.
Notably, 60 percent of the company’s subscriber base is in the rural areas, which was once considered unviable because of a perception that both the demand for telecom and revenues may not justify the investments.
India, boasts of the second-largest telecom user base in the world after China’s and ahead of the US, and now has 429.72 million telecom subscribers, both in the wireless and mobile segments, with a record growth of 59.48 percent last fiscal.
Mittal said at a time when most operators had cut tarrifs and offered freebies, Airtel kept its pricing strategy intact, assisting a 23 percent jump in profits at Rs.78.59 billion for the year ended March 31, against Rs.63.9 billion the previous fiscal.
Total income also surged over 37 percent to Rs.375.04 billion from Rs.272.9 billion.