Bharti Airtel on Wednesday said that it had become the first Indian mobile service provider, and tenth in the world, to cross the milestone of 40 million mobile customers in a single country.
Out of its subscriber base, the first 20 million came in 11 years while the next 20 million came in just the last 13 months, the company said. The company’s overall wireless market share reached over 23.2 per cent in April, rising from 20.4 per cent during 2006-07.

Leading the way
A Bharti Airtel statement said that Airtel’s lead over Hutch had widened from two million in March 2006 to over 11 million in April 2007, while the lead over Idea and BSNL had increased from 11 million to 24 million and from 0.5 million to eight million respectively. 
It further said that Airtel’s swing over Reliance Communications had increased by 10.7 million customers, from a deficit of 1.7 million to a lead of nine million. “The 40 million customer milestone is indeed a remarkable achievement not only for us at Airtel, but also for the country as it clearly underscores the coming of age of Indian companies in the international telecom arena,” Bharti Airtel President (mobile services) Sanjay Kapoor said.
Airtel services, he said, were presently available in nearly 4,700 census towns and over 200,000 non-census towns and villages covering 59 per cent of the country’s population. The company plans to roll out more than 30,000 cell sites during 2007-08 to increase its population coverage to 70 per cent.