Sunil Mittal's Airtel beats Mukesh Ambani's Reliance Jio in adding more subscribers in...

Yet another good news has come for Indian billionaire Sunil Mittal as his Bharti Airtel surpassed Mukesh Ambani's Reliance Jio in adding more subscribers in January 2025. According to a TRAI report, the 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. In January 2025, Airtel added an impressive 16.5 lakh new subscribers to its network. Meanwhile, Reliance Jio also welcomed 6.8 lakh new users. 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 mobile segment, Reliance Jio led the market with 46.5 crore subscribers, followed by Airtel with 38.69 crore customers in January 2025.

"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. 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.

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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 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.

(With inputs from PTI)