At the end of September, there were 20 networks in the world with more than 30 million customers. Eight of these were in the Asia Pacific region including the largest and the second largest. Six of the 20 come from just two countries, China and India, and these six together account for over 650 million customers, or nearly 21% of the global total.

In previous issues, when reviewing this region, we have noted that the weight of demographics limits the number of changes in the order of the top ten operators and this continues to be the case. The one change this quarter is that Bharti has now overtaken Telkomsel in Indonesia to take fourth place with a total of 48.9 million customers at the end of the period. It is poised to jump another place in the current quarter (at DoCoMo's expense) as the recently-published November numbers show the Japanese operator has added just a handful of new customers since the end of the quarter, to stand at 53.03 million, while the Indian number one has taken on a further 4 million to reach 52.96 million, less than seventy thousand below the company that was for almost all of the last century the clear global leader.

Asia Pacific, Leading MNOs (m)