NEW DELHI: In a surprising upset to the usual telecom rankings, state-run BSNL has edged past Bharti Airtel in net mobile subscriber additions for August, while Reliance Jio continued to lead the market, according to the latest data from TRAI.
Total telephone subscribers in India rose to 122.45 crore at the end of August from 122 crore in July, powered by new net additions of 35.19 lakh in the mobile segment.
Jio topped the chart with over 19 lakh new customers. BSNL grabbed the second spot with 13.85 lakh additions, pushing Airtel to third place, which added 4.96 lakh subscribers during the month. Meanwhile, Vodafone Idea continued its decline, shedding 3.08 lakh users.
Though BSNL had surprised the market earlier – in September 2024 – by gaining more users after tariff hikes by private players, this time its resurgence comes after a nationwide rollout of 4G services.
Broadband
In broadband, Jio maintained dominance with over 50 crore connections (including mobile and fixed line), followed by Airtel (30.9 crore), Vodafone Idea (12.7 crore), BSNL (3.43 crore), and Atria Convergence (23.5 lakh).
The wireline segment saw a reversal for Jio, which lost 15.5 lakh subscribers – likely due to its reclassification of certain fixed wireless access (FWA) customers as wireless users.
Tata Teleservices led wireline gains with 1.17 lakh new users, followed by Airtel with 1.08 lakh. State-run BSNL and MTNL continued to bleed wireline customers, losing 5,647 and 1.87 lakh lines respectively.
In the M2M (machine-to-machine) cellular segment, Airtel led with 5.26 crore connections (58.66 per cent share), followed by Vodafone Idea (19.40 per cent), Jio (17.94 per cent), and BSNL (4.01 per cent).
