Rise in Broadband connections

When it comes to broadband users, Jio’s still the biggest player, with 476.58 million subscribers (as of November 2024), while Airtel holds the second spot with 289.31 million, the report suggested.

Broadband connections, both wired and wireless, went up from 944.04 million in February to 944.12 million in March. It’s a small jump (just 0.009%), but wired broadband actually did a bit better with a 0.44% increase. Mobile broadband dipped slightly, though, just by 0.01%.

What about Wireline Connections?

On the other hand, Wireless subscribers, including mobile and 5G FWA users, rose to 1.16 billion—a monthly growth of 0.28%. What’s really interesting is that rural India is driving this increase. Rural areas added almost 4.86 million new users, while urban areas actually lost about 1.64 million. Thanks to this rural push, the total rural telephone subscriber base reached 534.69 million in March, and rural growth (1.02%) outpaced urban areas, which saw a small drop (-0.30%).

Wireline subscriptions took a leap from 36.91 million to 37.04 million—a modest 0.37% rise. While cities still dominate this segment, rural wireline users are catching up fast, with a 17.59% increase in March alone.

M2M and Number Portability Trends

As for Mobile Number Portability (MNP), 13.54 million users requested to switch operators while keeping their numbers. Since MNP started, nearly 1.12 billion requests have been processed—clearly, people like having the freedom to switch.

Machine-to-Machine (M2M) mobile connections—think IoT and smart devices—grew to 66.54 million. Airtel led here, capturing 52% of the market.

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