India’s wireless subscriber base grew to 1,312.25 million in August 2026 from 1,306.27 million in July, a monthly rise of 0.46%, according to Telecom Regulatory Authority of India data released on 28 September and reported by TelecomTalk. Within that, mobile subscribers grew 0.43% to 1,293.43 million from 1,287.92 million, and the rest of the wireless base is made up of fixed wireless access connections.
Reliance Jio added the most subscribers, 2,401,562, followed by Bharti Airtel with 2,110,812. Vodafone Idea added 506,139 and BSNL 492,831, while MTNL lost 5,879. The additions by Jio and Airtel together, about 4.5 million, are several times those of Vodafone Idea and BSNL together, about 1 million, on IndiaX24’s reading of the published figures.
The mobile market shares were close to those of earlier months. Jio had 39.31% with 508.43 million mobile subscribers, Airtel 38.01% with 491.60 million, Vodafone Idea 15.43% with 199.57 million, BSNL 7.24% with 93.67 million and MTNL 0.01% with 154,854. Together Jio and Airtel hold about 77% of the mobile market, on IndiaX24’s sum of the two shares.
The figures use TRAI’s definitions, which can be confusing because some summaries quote other numbers. One summary says that Jio had 523.22 million wireless broadband subscribers, Airtel 374.96 million and Vodafone Idea 130.87 million at the end of August, and another says that Jio had 506.03 million TRAI wireless connections with a 39.29% share and 285 million company-reported 5G users. These measure different things, such as broadband connections or company-reported figures, and they should not be compared with the mobile subscriber totals above.
A single month’s numbers hide the long-term trend. Search results say that India added more than 5 million mobile users in June 2026 and that the total telecom subscriber base, which includes wireline connections, was about 1.34 billion in June and 1.35 billion in July, according to TRAI-based reports. So the wireless base has been growing by around half a percent a month in the recent data, though those reports were not reviewed in detail.
What does growth mean at this scale? With more than 1.3 billion wireless connections for a population of about 1.4 billion, the market is close to saturation in terms of connections, but people hold more than one SIM, so the count of connections is not the count of people. The sources reviewed do not give the number of unique users.
Fixed wireless access is a separate story and is covered in another IndiaX24 article. In August, total 5G fixed wireless access subscribers rose to 13.45 million, of which Jio had 9,419,096 and Airtel 4,034,325, according to the same TRAI data.
The pattern shows why the regulator’s monthly figures matter to investors and policy makers. The share of each company shapes its revenue, and gains by BSNL, which added nearly half a million, are watched because of the government’s investment in the state-owned operator. The report does not explain why BSNL gained or MTNL lost customers.
The August numbers confirm a stable market with two large private operators growing fastest, and the next monthly release will show whether the trend continues.
Featured image: A mobile phone tower (file photo, UK; a stand-in image for telecom). Photo by Calistemon, licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
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