There is good news for Indians!
Bharti Airtel on 8th june 2010 aquires Zain Telecom, which is 2nd largest mobile operator among African nations for $10.7 billion n became world's 5th largest mobile operator. Due to this acquisition, Airtel now holds 180 million subscribers in asian and african nations. Zain Africa will now be 100% subsidiary of Bharti International.
Initially, Airtel had a meeting with MTN (No. 1 mobile operator in african nation), but due to terms n conditions of MTN, Airtel go for the 2nd opportunity i.e. Zain Telecom.
Airtel will have all the control on board, management plus they can change the brand name to Airtel which was not possible with MTN. So, now Bharti will have all the control on Zain telecom's 15 African nations excluding Sudan and Morocco.
Bharti will launch Airtel brand in Zain's operation in october this year.
"After this, we set a target of 100 million subscribers and $5 billion revenue by 2012-13." said Manoj Kohli, who handles all the International operations.
"We are fortunate that we got the second chance (ZainTelecom) and got much better deal," said Sunil Mittal chairman of Bharti Group.
Now, ChinaMobile is the world's largest mobile operator having 522 million subscribers, followed by Vodafone (348 million), Telefonica (206 million) and American Movil (201 million). And 5th is now Bharti Airtel followed by Telenor which recently enter into India with Unitech real estate company as Uninor.
read more ""AIRTEL" is now worlds 5th largest mobile operator !!!"