India’s Reliance Communications, controlled by billionaire Anil Ambani, is aiming to become one of the world’s top five mobile phone operators by user numbers as it plans to increase its subscribers by one third to 100m by the end of this year.

S.P. Shukla, chief executive of Reliance’s wireless division, said it reported a record increase in subscribers in the first quarter after it launched a network based on the GSM standard.