After phenomenal success on its home turf in India, Bharti has aspirations to go global. MTN has a total subscriber base of 68 million customers while Bharti has a subscriber base of about 64 million. If the deal goes through, the combined entity will have a subscriber base of 132 million. This would make Bharti the world’s fourth largest company after China Mobile, Vodafone and China Unicom. China Mobile and China Unicom are government-controlled companies.

MTN operates in high potential markets including Africa, Iran, Afghanistan and Syria. Some analysts have estimated that MTN has the potential to accumulate up to 240 million subscribers in these markets by 2012. However, a major challenge Bharti will face in seeing the deal through is that it will have to take permission from over 20 countries where MTN operates.