Telecom users rise to 1,190 mn in Jan; Airtel tops in new additions

Telecom user base in the country increased marginally to 1,190 million in January with Airtel leading the chart in new subscriber additions across wireline and mobile segments, according to a Trai report released on Monday.

The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) for the second time did not release updated broadband subscribers data in monthly subscribers report as Reliance Jio and Bharti Airtel did not submit data in prescribed format for December and January, the report said.

"The number of total telephone subscribers in India increased from 1,189.92 million at the end of December 2024 to 1,192.03 million at the end of January 2025, thereby showing a monthly growth rate of 0.18 per cent," the report said.

Airtel led the growth in mobile and wireline segment with net addition of 1.6 million and 117,000 customers, respectively, in January.

The regulator in the telecom subscription data for January 2025 reclassified 5G fixed wireless access (FWA) as a wireless service which led to the biggest decline in Reliance Jio wireline subscriber base of over 4.3 million.

At present, only Reliance Jio and Bharti Airtel provide 5G FWA service. Reliance Jio leads the 5G FWA segment with 48.44 lakh subscribers while Airtel has 8.72 lakh subscribers.

In the mobile segment, Reliance Jio led the market with 465 million subscribers followed by Airtel with 386.9 million customers in January 2025

Vodafone Idea (Vi) continues to be the biggest loser in the segment. The company lost over 1.3 million mobile subscribers in January. State-run BSNL and MTNL lost 369,000 and 2,617 customers, respectively.

In the wireline segment, BSNL lost 39,953 subscribers, MTNL 9,904, Quadrant 4,741, Vi 3,447, and STPL 1,690.

Trai published old broadband data which shows Reliance leading the segment with 46.5 crore wireless and 1.14 crore wireline connections as of November 2024.

It is followed by Bharti Airtel with 28 crore wireless broadband customers and 8.55 crore wired broadband connections.

According to the report, Bharti Airtel led machine-to-machine (M2M) connections with 3.3 crore subscribers followed by Vi with 1.5 crore customers, Reliance Jio 10.9 million subscribers and BSNL with 3.2 million subscribers.

The number of M2M cellular mobile connections increased to 63 million in January from 59 million in December.