NEW DELHI (Reuters) - Bharti Airtel, the world's fifth-biggest mobile phone carrier by subscribers, reported on Wednesday a 22 percent fall in quarterly profit -- its eighth straight quarter of declining profits -- hit by higher interest costs.
Bharti, controlled by billionaire Sunil Mittal and also nearly a third owned by Southeast Asia's biggest phone firm SingTel, said consolidated net profit fell to 10.11 billion indian rupees for its fiscal third quarter ended December from 13.03 billion rupees a year earlier.
The results were based on international accounting standards.
A Reuters poll of brokerages had expected a 3.2 percent rise in net profit to 13.45 billion rupes for India's top mobile phone operator, which in 2010 bought mobile operations from Kuwait's Zain in 15 African countries in a $9 billion debt-funded deal.
Bharti currently operates in 19 countries across Asia and Africa. India is the company's biggest market where it had more than 175 million mobile customers as of December.
(Reporting by Devidutta Tripathy; Editing by Muralikumar Anantharaman and by Ranjit Gangadharan)
