{"id":528800,"date":"2010-04-15T15:10:03","date_gmt":"2010-04-15T19:10:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/gigaom.com\/?p=113369"},"modified":"2010-04-15T15:10:03","modified_gmt":"2010-04-15T19:10:03","slug":"india%e2%80%99s-bharti-airtel-to-enter-telecom%e2%80%99s-top-five","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/528800","title":{"rendered":"India\u2019s Bharti Airtel to Enter Telecom\u2019s Top Five"},"content":{"rendered":"

India’s Bharti Airtel<\/a> will become the fifth-largest telecom provider in the world by purchasing 15 African markets from Zain in deal valued at $10.7 billion<\/a>, according to Wireless Intelligence. Combining the 15 new markets with the three that Bharti held prior, the purchase will give it just under 170 million\u00a0subscribers out of a potential customer population of 450 million in all 18 areas. Unless a regulatory issue holds up the deal<\/a>, the newly acquired markets will include: Burkina Faso, Chad, Congo Brazzaville, Democratic Republic of Congo, Gabon, Ghana, Kenya, Madagascar, Malawi, Niger, Nigeria, Sierra Leone, Tanzania, Uganda and Zambia.<\/p>\n

As I review the largest mobile providers in the world, I’m reminded that I need to spend more time looking beyond my backyard in the U.S. It would take the combined<\/em> subscriber counts of the two largest carriers here — Verizon’s 91 million and AT&T’s 85 million — to rival Bharti’s new size. Perhaps Nokia’s focus on emerging markets<\/a> isn’t such a bad strategy after all. This worldwide approach is rubbing off on others as\u00a0Dell just announced a deal with Telfonica Group<\/a> in Latin America, the world’s No. 3 three mobile provider, to provide services and smartphones such as its Android-powered Aero handset<\/a>. Now if we could only get the carriers to work out better international roaming agreements so that no one ever gets another $10,000 monthly bill<\/a>, we’d be in business.<\/p>\n

Here’s a look at where Airtel will fit in among the top mobile providers in the world:<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
Worldwide Mobile Telecom Rankings<\/caption>\n
Rank<\/th>\nProvider<\/th>\nTotal Connections<\/th>\nMarkets<\/th>\n<\/tr>\n
1<\/td>\nChina Mobile<\/td>\n525,331,266<\/td>\n2<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
2<\/td>\nVodafone Group<\/td>\n309,580,257<\/td>\n23<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
3<\/td>\nTelefonica Group<\/td>\n202,333,430<\/td>\n20<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
4<\/td>\nAmerica Movil Group<\/td>\n186,544,900<\/td>\n17<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
5<\/td>\nAirtel Group<\/td>\n169,468,523<\/td>\n18<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
6<\/td>\nChina Unicom<\/td>\n147,587,000<\/td>\n1<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
7<\/td>\nDeutsche Telekom Group<\/td>\n127,919,986<\/td>\n12<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
8<\/td>\nTelenor Group<\/td>\n101,367,838<\/td>\n10<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

Table Source: Wireless Intelligence<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

\n<\/img><\/a> <\/img><\/a> <\/img><\/a> <\/img><\/a> <\/img><\/a>\n<\/div>\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

India’s Bharti Airtel will become the fifth-largest telecom provider in the world by purchasing 15 African markets from Zain in deal valued at $10.7 billion, according to Wireless Intelligence. Combining the 15 new markets with the three that Bharti held prior, the purchase will give it just under 170 million\u00a0subscribers out of a potential customer […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":670,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16,7,14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-528800","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-mobile","category-news","category-telecom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/528800","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/670"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=528800"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/528800\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=528800"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=528800"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=528800"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}