Reliance Jio leads India's telecom subscriber growth in August 2026

India’s wireless telecom subscriber base grew to over 1.3 billion in August 2026, according to data from the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI). Total wireless subscribers rose by 0.46 percent during the month.

Reliance Jio led subscriber growth, adding approximately 2.4 million total connections. When excluding Machine-to-Machine (M2M) connections, Jio added roughly 1.86 million standard mobile customers, significantly outpacing Bharti Airtel, which added about 500,000. Jio’s total mobile base reached approximately 508.4 million, representing a market share of about 41.7%.

In terms of network performance, a TRAI drive test conducted in July 2026 in the Delhi region showed Jio recorded the fastest mobile download speeds at 257.03 Mbps. Airtel recorded the highest upload speed at 24.83 Mbps. Vodafone Idea and MTNL trailed behind in download performance.

Additionally, 5G Fixed Wireless Access (FWA) subscribers increased to 13.45 million. Jio reported a 5G FWA user base of approximately 9.4 million, while Airtel reported approximately 4 million users.