Telecom user base rises marginally to 119 crore in January, Airtel leads new customer additions

Telecom user base in the country increased marginally to 119 crore 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 16.53 lakh and 1.17 lakh 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 43.36 lakh.

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 46.5 crore subscribers followed by Airtel with 38.69 crore customers in January 2025.

Vodafone Idea (Vi) continues to be the biggest loser in the segment. The company lost over 13 lakh mobile subscribers in January. State-run BSNL and MTNL lost 3.69 lakh 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 1.09 crore subscribers and BSNL with 32.6 lakh subscribers.

The number of M2M cellular mobile connections increased to 6.3 crore in January from 5.9 crore in December.