State-owned BSNL surpassed Bharti Airtel in new mobile customer additions in August, a feat not achieved in nearly a year, while Reliance Jio continued to lead the chart, according to data released by the telecom regulator TRAI on Monday. The total number of telephone subscribers in the country grew to 122.45 crore at the end of August, up from 122 crore in July. This growth was driven by a net addition of 35.19 lakh customers in the mobile segment.
Mobile and broadband performance
| Operator | New Mobile Customers (August) |
| Reliance Jio | Over 19 lakh |
| BSNL | 13.85 lakh |
| Airtel | 4.96 lakh |
Vodafone Idea was the biggest loser, seeing a decline of 3.08 lakh net mobile subscribers in August.
BSNL had previously added the highest number of customers across all operators in September 2024, following a tariff hike by private players, despite providing only 3G services at the time. The state-owned firm recently launched its 4G service nationwide.
In the broadband segment, Reliance Jio maintained its lead with over 50 crore customers (mobile and fixed line connections), followed by Bharti Airtel (30.9 crore), Vodafone Idea (12.7 crore), BSNL (3.43 crore), and Atria Convergence (23.5 lakh).
Wireline and FWA dynamics
The wireline (fixed-line) segment saw Reliance Jio as the biggest loser, with a decline of 15.5 lakh customers.
This decline is due to a categorisation change: Jio began reporting its fixed wireless access (FWA) subscribers—which were previously counted in the wireline segment—as wireless customers from August onwards.
The number of wireless (5G FWA) subscribers increased to 89 lakh by the end of August 2025, up from 84 lakh in July. UBR (Unlicensed Band Radio) FWA subscriptions stood at 2.1 million.
Growth in the wireline segment was led by Tata Teleservices (1.17 lakh net additions), Bharti Airtel (1.08 lakh), and Vodafone Idea (24,215). State-owned operators MTNL and BSNL continued to lose wireline customers, with MTNL losing 1.87 lakh connections and BSNL losing 5,647.
M2M connections
Bharti Airtel led the M2M (machine-to-machine) cellular mobile connections with 5.26 crore connections, commanding a market share of 58.66 per cent. It was followed by Vodafone Idea (19.4 per cent), Reliance Jio Infocom Limited (17.94 per cent), and BSNL (4.01 per cent).
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