Telecom Regulatory of India (Trai) in its subscription data for the month of October stated that country’s telecom subscriber base grew to over 1.17 billion. The report also said that telco giant Bharti Airtel maintained its leadership in mobile subscriber addition that accounts for over 98 per cent of India’s total connections.

This is the second consecutive month when Airtel added highest number of subscribers. In September, it had regained the leadership position in subscriber addition after a gap of four years.

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The Sunil Bharti Mittal-led company added 3.67 million new customers during the month under review taking its total wireless customer base to 330.28 million in October 2020. Whereas, Reliance Jio, which was at the second position, added 2.22 million new subscribers, taking its total subscriber base to 406.35 million during the reported month.

The other four mobile service providers: Vodafone Idea Ltd (VIL), BSNL, MTNL and Reliance Communications, reported loss of subscriber base.

VIL lost the maximum mobile customers during the month. The company lost 2.65 million subscribers, with its wireless subscriber base dipping to 292.83 million in October.

BSNL lost 10,208 customers, MTNL 7,307 customers and Reliance Communications lost 1,488 mobile customers.

The overall telecom subscriber base in the country, however, increased to 1,171.8 million in October from 1,168.66 million in September 2020.

“Total wireless subscribers increased from 1,148.58 million at the end of September 2020 to 1,151.81 million at the end of October 2020,” the report said.

The wireline subscriber base declined in October to 19.99 million from 20.08 million in September. The segment had recorded marginal growth in September.

In wireline segment, Reliance Jio added the most subscribers at 2,45,912. It was followed by Bharti Airtel which added 48,397 fixed line connections, VIL with 9,400 subscriber addition and Quadrant which added 5,198 customers.

Broadband subscriber base in the country grew 1.17 per cent to 734.82 million, with the wireless segment contributing close to 97 per cent of the total connection.

Mobile based broadband subscriber base grew 1.15 per cent to 712.67 million in October as compared to 704.57 million in September.

The top five service providers constituted 98.85 per cent market share of the total broadband subscribers at the end of October 2020.