India crossed 100 crore Internet connections in November 2025, the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) announced on Wednesday, a significant milestone in India’s connectivity landscape. As of November 30, India had a total of 100.36 crore broadband subscriptions, up from 99.81 crore the previous month. The 1-billion mark also caps a period of intense growth and consolidation that has only in recent months showed signs of plateauing.
As has been the case since 2016, when Reliance Jio entered and disrupted the telecom market, the vast majority of telecom subscriptions are from smartphone users, and not home broadband. It is not clear if 100 crore individuals in and of themselves have their own Internet connection, as devices tend to be shared, and the data also includes several dual-SIM users, and counts people with home broadband as well as 4G or 5G handsets twice.
The data shows two clear divides, between urban and rural India, and between fixed line and wireless broadband, the latter referring to smartphone users on telecom operators’ networks. There are 958.54 million smartphone connections, and 45.11 million fixed line connections, with the latter accounting for 4.5% of Internet connections in India. Nearly nine in ten fixed line connections are in urban areas, and over half the smartphone connections (54.76%) are in urban areas.
The data also measures teledensity, or Internet connections per unit of population, based on a 2020 government estimate of India’s population in this year (no decennial census has been conducted since 2011). This measure shows that there are 127.19% as many wireless internet connections as there are people in urban areas, and 8.2% teledensity for fixed line internet connections. In rural areas, the wireless teledensity is 58.94% and the wired broadband teledensity is a mere 0.56%.
The three private operators account for over 90% of the Internet connections in India. Reliance Jio alone accounts for over half, with Bharti Airtel accounting for 31.31%, and Vodafone Idea Ltd, which on Wednesday had a large chunk of its Adjusted Gross Revenue due deferred for five years, serving 12.73% of active Internet connections. The top five fixed broadband operators, which include two of the three top telcos, BSNL and Kerala Vision Broadband Ltd., account for 70% of this market.
Published – December 31, 2025 08:48 pm IST
