Mumbai: For the 16th consecutive month, Vodafone Idea continued to lose subscribers. According to the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India's monthly subscriber data, the telecom provider lost 3.5 million wireless subscribers. Meanwhile, Reliance Jio continued to strengthen its position and added more than 1.4 million wireless subscribers during the month. Bharti Airtel added 0.80 million during the same period.

The total number of wireless subscribers decreased from 1,145.45 million to 1,143.63 million in October. The number of wireless subscribers in urban areas decreased from 627.14 million to 625.18 million. However, wireless subscriptions in rural areas increased from 518.31 million to 518.45 million.

As per Trai data, there were 1016.81 active wireless subscribers during the month. Reliance Jio had the highest number of active wireless subscribers at 390.98 million, followed by Bharti Airtel at 358.03 million and Vodafone Idea at 211.72 million. BSNL had 55.47 million active wireless subscribers.

As per information received from 874 operators in August, Trai found that total broadband subscribers increased from 816.24 million to 821.49 million. The broadband subscribers comprised 789.10 million mobile device users, 31.35 million wired subscribers, and 1.04 million fixed wireless subscribers.

The top five broadband service providers were Reliance Jio Infocomm with 426.80 million subscribers, followed by Bharti Airtel (225.09 million), Vodafone Idea (123.20 million), BSNL (25.62 million), and Atria Convergence (2.13 million).

The top five wired broadband service providers were Reliance Jio Infocomm with 6.56 million subscribers, followed by Bharti Airtel (5.27 million), BSNL (3.91 million), Atria Convergence (2.14 million), and Hathway Cable & Datacom (1.13 million).

The top five wireless broadband service providers were Reliance Jio Infocomm (421.38 million), Bharti Airtel (222.85 million), Vodafone Idea (123.36 million), BSNL (22.10 million), and Intech Online (0.23 million).

The number of wireline subscribers increased from 26.47 million to 26.82 million in October.

The number of telephone subscribers in India decreased from 1,171.92 million to 1,170.45 million. Urban telephone subscriptions decreased from 651.61 million to 649.99 million. However, rural subscriptions also increased from 520.30 million to 520.46 million.

During October, a total of 11.81 million requests were received for mobile number portability (MNP).