China Mobile Group, which has wholly-owned subsidiaries in Pakistan and Hong Kong, recently passed the 1 billion mobile connections milestone, consolidating its position as the world’s largest mobile player by a huge margin.

The market leader in China signed up 9.7 million new mobile users in May to take its domestic total to 966.6 million.

Taking into account 42 million connections at Zong in Pakistan and 3.1 million at China Mobile Hong Kong, the group ended May with a total of 1.01 billion.

The five largest operator groups in the world are based in China and India.

Data from GSMA Intelligence ranked Bharti Airtel Group second with 460.6 million mobile connections at end-March, gleaned from operations in India and a number of African nations.

Reliance Jio was third with 410.2 million.

China Telecom and China Unicom were fourth and fifth with 379.5 million and 318.5 million respectively.

Outside of Asia, the largest group was America Movil with 280 million connections.