Bharti Airtel is the world's third largest, single-country mobile operator and fifth largest telecom operator in the

world with a subscriber base of over 160 million It also offers fixed line services and broadband services. It offers its telecom services under the Airtel brand and is headed by Sunil Bharti Mittal. Bharti Airtel is the first Indian telecom service provider to achieve this Cisco Gold Certification. To earn Gold Certification, Bharti Airtel had to meet rigorous standards for networking competency, service, support and customer satisfaction set forth by Cisco. The company also provides land-line telephone services and broadband Internet access (DSL) in over 96 cities in India. It also acts as a carrier for national and international long distance communication services. The company has a submarine cable landing station at Chennai, which connects the submarine cable connecting Chennai and Singapore. In January 2010, it was announced that the Bangladesh Telecommuncations Regulatory Commission (BTRC) had given Bharti Airtel the go ahead to acquire a 70% stake in the Bangladesh business of Abu Dhabi based Warid Telcom. The latter had till date invested a total of $600 million, with plans to bring their Bangladesh investments to the $1 billion mark. Airtel's 70% stake in the company is said to be at a cost of an initial $300 million.The service is being operated under the brand name Warid Telecom.