Airtel Leads Telecom Growth as Subscriber Numbers Edge Up

The Indian telecom sector's user base grew marginally to 119 crore as Airtel spearheaded new subscriber additions in both wireline and mobile segments. While Trai withheld broadband data, Airtel led in M2M connections. Reliance Jio excelled in 5G FWA. Vi faced subscriber losses across segments.

The telecom sector in India saw a slight increase in its user base, climbing to 119 crore in January, with Airtel emerging as the leader in adding new subscribers across both wireline and mobile segments, as per the latest report by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) released on Monday.

The report noted that, for a second time, Trai did not update its broadband subscribers data, due to Reliance Jio and Bharti Airtel failing to submit the necessary information in the prescribed format for December and January.

Airtel achieved noticeable growth in both mobile and wireline sectors with an additional 16.53 lakh and 1.17 lakh customers, respectively, in January. Meanwhile, Jio maintained its dominance in the 5G FWA domain with 48.44 lakh subscribers as against Airtel's 8.72 lakh. In the mobile space, Jio led the market with a strong 46.5 crore subscriber base, while Vodafone Idea experienced significant losses.

(With inputs from agencies.)