Airtel has crossed 50 million subscribers from its 17 operations in Africa, including Ghana, after mother company Bharti Airtel invested some US$1 billion towards rollout on the continent. This is only after 17 months of acquiring Zain Africa at a whopping US$10.7 billion in June last year. In September of the same year, the company signed a historic 10-year deal with IBM to provide and manage the ICT backbone for Airtel operations in Africa, and Airtel promised to transform the way Africa communicated on the back of that ICT backbone. The company said at its India-base it had added 14 million new mobile customers within the 17 month period and invested $1 billion in the network infrastructure during the current financial year. Airtel Ghana inherited a little over one million subscribers from Zain Ghana, and it only recently went past the two-millionth mark in the country, consolidating its firm position as the fourth biggest of five players in Ghana. It said in its last quarterly report, it had 48.4 million customers in the continent with 99.3 percent of them being prepaid customers. Airtel had previously reported total revenues of $1,030 million with a net loss of $81 million in Africa, by the end of September 2011. The company said it was awarded 3G licenses in 12 countries on the continent, including Ghana, and launched its first 3G network in Congo Brazzaville in October 2011, and licenses to operate 2G and 3G networks in Rwanda for the next 15 years. These, it said had also contributed to the appreciable growth in subscribers over the last 17 months. Airtel also recently launched its Airtel Money Service on a full scale in Kenya and Zambia and also tied up with Standard Chartered Bank and MasterCard to launch a virtual card called ‘PayOnline’, allowing Airtel customers to purchase from all online sites where MasterCard is accepted. Meanwhile Airtel Ghana has given Ghanaian journalists an experiential session with Airtel Money Service, which is due to be launched soon in partnership with Ecobank. The company also inked deals with companies like Nokia, Samsung and Blackberry to offer handsets with its services and companies such as IBM, Ericsson, Nokia Siemens, Huawei, Spanco, Tech Mahindra and Samsung to offer services to the customers. Bharti Airtel currently operates in 17 countries on the continent including Nigeria, Burkina Faso, Chad, Congo B, Democratic Republic of Congo, Gabon, Madagascar, Niger, Ghana, Kenya, Malawi, Seychelles, Sierra Leone, Tanzania, Uganda and Zambia.