NEW DELHI: The struggles of Vodafone Idea, BSNL and MTNL continued in May 2025, with all three operators together losing over 4 lakh telecom subscribers even as the country’s overall telecom subscriber base saw marginal growth, data from the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) showed on Friday.
Vodafone Idea (Vi) alone lost 2.74 lakh mobile users, while BSNL saw a reduction of 1.35 lakh and MTNL 4.7 thousand. In the fixed line segment, the losses were steeper – MTNL lost 66,834 landline customers in May, the highest among all operators, followed by BSNL, which shed over 46,000 subscribers.
These losses sharply contrasted with the net addition of 43.58 lakh telecom subscribers in May, indicating that growth in the sector continues to bypass the struggling public sector and debt-laden private players.
The total telecom subscriber base grew to 120.7 crore in May from 120.3 crore in April. Of this, 116.84 crore were mobile users and 3.86 crore landline subscribers.
Jio, Airtel drive growth
The overall market expansion was driven almost entirely by Reliance Jio and Bharti Airtel, which together accounted for 99.84 per cent of the net subscriber additions. Jio alone added 27 lakh wireless users, pushing its total mobile base to 47.24 crore and giving it a 40.92 per cent market share. Airtel added 2.75 lakh wireless customers, taking its subscriber base to 39 crore.
In the wireline segment as well, Jio remained the top gainer with 12.76 lakh new subscribers, while Airtel added close to 99,000. Other private operators like Tata Teleservices, Vi, and STPL added only a few thousand subscribers each, while MTNL and BSNL posted heavy losses.
Broadband subscriptions across the country rose to 97.48 crore in May. Reliance Jio led this segment with 49.44 crore subscribers, followed by Airtel at 30.2 crore, Vi at 12.66 crore, BSNL at 3.43 crore and Atria Convergence with 23.2 lakh.
Meanwhile, the 5G fixed wireless access (FWA) subscriber base dropped marginally to 74 lakh from 75 lakh in April. The decline was mainly due to Reliance Jio reclassifying over 10 lakh unlicensed band FWA users into the FTTx category, which falls under the fixed line segment.
The May data also marked the return of Reliance Jio and Airtel to the Trai broadband reporting framework after a five-month gap, providing a more complete picture of the subscriber landscape.
