Bharti signs up 50 millionth African customer

customer in Africa, within just 17 months of acquiring Zain's mobile operations in 16 African countries, The Nigerian Bulletin reports.

“This milestone demonstrates our continued dedication and commitment to Africa,” says Manoj Kohli, CEO and joint MD of Bharti Airtel.

In order to continue to drive subscribers, the mobile operator has offered its users 90 days of free access to Twitter, Silicon India states.

Without any GPRS activated, users will receive Twitter updates on their phones via SMS. This offer is valid until 1 March 2012.

Bharti Airtel currently has 173 million mobile users in total and dominates the Indian mobile phone market, which has already reached cellphone saturation, Ottawa Citizen notes.

Indian mobile phone operators added a net 7.9 million mobile subscribers in September, or a 0.9% growth over the previous month, taking the total connections in the world's second-biggest mobile phone market to 873.6 million.

Remarkably, this means mobile phone additions in India have sharply fallen in recent months after rising at a monthly average of 19 million last year, with nearly 73% of the population now having access to them.