Bharti Airtel, the parent company of Airtel Rwanda, is among the top three largest mobile operators in the world in terms of subscribers. According to the latest data published by World Cellular Information Service (WCIS), Bharti Airtel is the third largest telecom firm, moving one position up in the global rankings. 

"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,” said Sunil Bharti Mittal, the chairman of Bharti Airtel.

"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.”

He thanked the firm’s staff and 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”.

The top two telecom firms globally are China Mobile and Vodafone, while China Unicom and America Movil ranked fourth and fifth, respectively.

Airtel’s mobile networks cover over 1.85 billion people in 20 countries, and carried over 1.23 trillion minutes of calls and over 333 petabytes of data in the financial year 2014/15, according to the report.

Bharti Airtel is the largest mobile operator in Africa, in terms of geographical footprint.

The firm offers 2G, 3G services and Airtel Money across 17 countries on the continent. Airtel Money is one of the largest and fastest-growing mobile commerce services on the continent and, with data adoption leading the growth in Africa, Airtel is well positioned to leverage the opportunities.

In Rwanda, Airtel has grown to more than one million active subscribers in three years, with over 70 per cent of its customers registered on Airtel Money, according to Airtel Rwanda managing director, Teddy Bhullar.

He said the telecom firm has also positioned itself as the leading Internet provider of 3.75G and 4G Internet services in the country.

Bhullar reaffirmed Airtel’s commitment to Rwanda, saying the telecom would continue giving customers value-for-money in voice, data and mobile commerce services.

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.

The company pioneered the low-cost business model based on outsourcing that has allowed it to expand its services rapidly and offer customers affordable access to mobile telephony.

business@newtimes.co.rw