Reliance Jio tops March subscriber growth with 2.17 million additions

Reliance Jio led March mobile subscriber growth with 2.17 million additions as Airtel's pace slowed and Vodafone Idea reported a steep rise in user exits

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Reliance Jio has gained the most number of subscribers in March with 2.17 million new wireless users or 74 per cent of all subscriber additions in the industry, data from the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) showed on Wednesday.

 

The market leader has continued to consolidate its position in 2025, gaining 1.76 million and 0.68 million users in February, and January respectively.

 

On the other hand, the pace of user addition for Airtel continued to slow for the second-month. In March, Bharti Airtel added 1.25 million users, down from 1.59 million and 1.65 million new users in the two preceding months.

 

With 0.54 million users leaving its service in March, Vodafone Idea (Vi) saw customer attrition spike. It had lost just 20,720 subscribers in February, after shedding 1.33 million in January.

 

Meanwhile, state-owned telecom operator BSNL managed to stage a turnaround in March. It gained 49,177 users in March, after losing 0.56 million users and 0.15 million users in the preceding two months. With BSNL keeping tariffs unchanged, a large number of subscribers using entry-level plans shifted to the telco in July, last year, but the additions had reversed in the last few months of 2024.

 

The telco is currently aiming to roll out its home-grown 4G network nationwide with 1 lakh towers by June.

 

Jio and Airtel mobile wireless market share continued to inch up in March, rising to 40.6 per cent, and 33.69 per cent in March. The rise was primarily at the expense of BSNL, whose share fell to 7.87 per cent. Vi had a 17.75 per cent share.

 

The overall number of mobile phone connections in India increased by 2.94 million or 0.25 per cent in March.

 

There were 6.76 million 5G FWA subscribers at March-end in India, up by 7.94 per cent from the 6.27 million users in the preceding month. Of this, 82.3 per cent or 5.57 million subscribers were using Reliance Jio, with the rest being Airtel users.

 

FWA delivers high-speed internet using wireless signals instead of traditional wired infrastructure like fibre or cable. A dedicated customer premises equipment (CPE), such as a fixed outdoor antenna or an indoor router, picks up signals from nearby mobile towers and converts them into Wi-Fi or Ethernet.

 

Trai data also revealed 13.54 million subscribers had submitted requests for Mobile Number Portability (MNP) in the latest month, up from 12.06 million in February. Meanwhile, the number of wireline subscribers increased by 0.13 million in the country, rising 0.37 per cent to 37.04 millon.