Telecom subscriber base rises to 1.34 bn in May, Airtel leads growth: Trai

India's telecom subscriber base rose to 1.34 billion in May, with Airtel and Jio accounting for nearly 94% of the month's net additions

Telecom subscriber base grew to 1.34 billion in May, driven by net additions on the Bharti Airtel and Reliance Jio networks, according to Trai data released on Thursday.

 

Airtel led the growth in subscriber base with net addition of 2.98 million subscribers over the month of April, comprising 2.92 mn in the mobile segment and 53,809 in fixed line connection segment.

 

It was followed by Reliance Jio, which reported a net addition of 2.25 mn subscribers, comprising 2.15 mn in the mobile segment and 0.10 mn in thefixed line segment.

 

Both private telecom operators jointly contributed 5.23 mn new subscribers, or about 94 per cent, in the total net addition of 5.56 mn subscribers in May.

   

"The number of total telephone subscribers in India increased from 1,337.54 million at the end of April 2026 to 1,343.10 million at the end of May 2026, thereby showing a monthly growth rate of 0.42 per cent," Trai's monthly data subscriber report for May 2026 said.

 

The total number of wireless connections in May increased to 1.29 bn from 128.89 crore in April. The total wireless connections comprised 1.14 bn consumer sim, 131.1 mn M2M sim and 11.7 mn fixed wireless access connections.

 

As per the information filed by 1,544 operators for the month of May 2026, the total number of broadband subscribers increased to 1.08 bn from 1.07 bn in April.

 

Reliance Jio led the segment with 529.6 mn broadband subscribers. It was followed by Bharti Airtel with 376 mn subscribers, Vi 129 mn, BSNL 27 mn and Atria Convergence 2.4 mn broadband subscribers.