Bharti Airtel has moved ahead of major telecom players like America Movil (274.14 million), China Unicom (299.09 million) and others.
Despite the regulatory hurdles and policy uncertainties in the domestic market, Indian telecom MNC Bharti Airtel has surged ahead of many global players to become the third-largest mobile operator in the world with a subscriber-base of 303 million and a presence in 20 countries.
According to the data put out by World Cellular Information Service (WCIS), the Sunil Mittal-led company is behind just China Mobile and UK's Vodafone, which have 626.27 million and 403.08 million subscribers, respectively.
Bharti Airtel has moved ahead of major telecom players like America Movil (274.14 million), China Unicom (299.09 million) and others.
T V Ramachandran, chairman of Assocham National Council on Telecommunications, said Bharti's feat was not "an overnight miracle".
"Sunil Mittal has taken many risks, which has paid off today. It has not happened in a short period or suddenly but steadily with a conscious effort to expand its presence across the globe," he said.
Ramachandran said it was heartening to see that out of the top three telecom players in the world, two were out of India.
"UK's Vodafone is at the second position because of its significant presence in India," he said.
According to him, Mittal's achievement was all the more commendable because of the challenging environment in the Indian market.
"There were many challenges in terms of no clear policies or regulations in place, but they (Bharti) learned along the way from what happened in India and elsewhere," he said.
Ramachandra said Bharti has maintained its lead in the market due to its innovative business model and technology.
A statement issued by the company said: "Airtel began operations in November 1995 in New Delhi and in less than two decades it has emerged as one of the top brands in the emerging markets with an unmatched scale and diversity of operations".
The company attributed the rapid growth in number of mobile users to its low-cost business model based on outsourcing and affordable access to mobile telephony.
Bengaluru-based telecom professional G Krishna Kumar said the company knew where to cut cost to make its services affordable to the users.
He said Bharti was focused on maintaining its lead in the market despite its average revenue per user (Arpu) being among the lowest in the world at $2-3 per user compared $10-20 per users for most other players.
"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 Bharti Airtel's Sunil Mittal.
He said the company seamlessly manages global scale operations in diverse geographies and delivers the same world-class services to its customers.
Airtel's mobile networks cover over 1.85 billion people across its operations in 20 countries and carried over 1.23 trillion minutes of calls and over 333 petabytes of data in 2014-15.
It offered the widest ranger services in India from 2G to 3G, 4G, mobile commerce and other value-added services (VAS) and had its distribution channel is spread across 1.5 million outlets, with network presence in 5,121 census and 464,045 non-census towns and villages, covering approximately 86.8% of the country's population.
It also has a wide presence in Africa, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and other markets around the world.
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