TRAI September data: India adds 6.57 million mobile users, Jio edges Airtel

India added 6.57 million (65.7 lakh) mobile subscribers in September 2026, taking the country's mobile base to about 1.3 billion, according to monthly data released by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) on Tuesday, 27 October 2026. Reliance Jio added 27.1 lakh users, just ahead of Bharti Airtel's 26.9 lakh, and the two together accounted for about 82% of the month's net growth. Every major operator, including Vodafone Idea and state-run BSNL, reported a net gain.

TRAI's monthly figures are the clearest public scorecard of India's telecom market, one of the largest in the world. Tele-density means the number of telephone connections for every 100 people. At 95.52%, India is close to one connection per person on paper, although many people own more than one SIM, so the real share of people with a phone is lower.

The September numbers show the market still growing, but slowly and mostly for the two biggest operators. Jio and Airtel have taken most of the new users for several years, helped by their wider 5G networks. Vodafone Idea, the third private operator, has long struggled to keep customers, so a net gain for it is notable even if it is small. BSNL has been rolling out its own 4G network, and its gain suggests that some users are moving to or adding a BSNL connection.

The growth in broadband matters more for the digital economy than the raw mobile count. Broadband in TRAI's data means internet connections at a minimum speed, and almost all of them are on mobile phones. More than 1.1 billion broadband connections show how deeply mobile internet has spread into towns and villages, which supports digital payments, online education and government services.

The data also comes a day before Reliance Jio's shares list on the stock exchanges after its initial public offering, so investors are watching the company's subscriber momentum closely.

Short-term: Jio and Airtel strengthen their lead in new users, while Vodafone Idea and BSNL show modest gains. Rural mobile users remain a large share of the market, at about 546 million, against about 754 million in towns and cities. Operators will publish their own quarterly results in the coming weeks, which will show whether the new users are also paying more.

Long-term: With tele-density near 96%, future growth will come less from new users and more from upgrading existing users to 5G, home broadband and higher-value plans. That shift will decide operators' revenue per user, a key measure of their financial health.

Who is affected: Mobile and broadband users, the four major operators and their investors, equipment makers, and businesses and government services that depend on mobile internet reach.

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