TRAI (Telecom Regulatory Authority of India)'s wired Broadband service providers numbers (from Nov 2025) https://trai.gov.in/sites/default/files/2025-12/English%20Press%20Release%20of%20Telecom%20Subscription%20Data-November-25_English-31.12.2025_1815-sd_0.pdf
Bharti Airtel seems to have covered quite some ground behind Reliance Jio.
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Reliance Communication (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reliance_Communications, not Reliance Jio) gained "2 users" between Oct and Nov 2025 and now has total 523 reported wireless/mobile users somehow. Page 19 of report.
BSNL gained 4 lakh users in the same period, which is impressive.
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Bharti Airtel leading the charge in M2M SIMs (Machine-to-Machine Subscriber Identity Module, see https://www.airtel.in/b2b/insights/blogs/m2m-sim-card/) ie all the IoT SIMs.
Page 11 of TRAI report.
PS - too many Internet Inside cars maybe :P
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@sahil Makes one wonder when Ambani Bhaiya will announce a subsidy on M2M SIMs
@khubsuratinsaan 9.3 crore subs, still amazes me. I hope it survives and continue to see the growth.
@disaster2life I guess we now know the reason for the rise in subscribers 😛 @sahil
@sahil Yeah, I wish that too. PSU's are more charming than private corporations 🥰@disaster2life
@khubsuratinsaan they have been gaining ground since (ever), though Airtel seems to have cracked it.
Following chart is from Nov 2024 (one year previous) from https://trai.gov.in/sites/default/files/2025-01/PR_No.06of2025_0.pdf - Page 9
Airtel 29 mil --> 63 mil
Jio 9.64 mil --> 18.60 mil
@sahil There seems to be 31 crore private vehicles on Indian roads, So I guess this market is only gonna grow. Can't find the data for number of "smart" vehicles though.
@disaster2life that free plan sounds awesome, but unfortunately still not enough to bear with BSNL broadband internet fatafat... @sahil
@khubsuratinsaan unsure if all "smart" vehicles would have M2M SIMs.
For MG (internet inside tagline) cars, we do know that they use Airtel M2M from https://www.mgmotor.co.in/media-center/newsroom/mg-motor-showcases-futuristic-car-technology and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xU35pWrRzz8
@khubsuratinsaan @disaster2life ah! I forgot to mention, I'm on BharatNet/BSNL fiber back home (in HP). Only Fiber option available in my hilly village (1/2 customer being me :D). Works fine for most eyeball stuff, not so good for non Youtube/Hotstar/etc stuff.
See https://toots.sahilister.in/@sahil/112150983050694626
RT: https://toots.sahilister.in/users/sahil/statuses/112150983050694626
@sahil Aah I see. I thought looking at the "smart" vehicles data would increase accuracy by a lot, but I guess that may not be the case.
@sahil Cool... BSNL for the win! How the heck did you find such an old post though?? (BTW you can quote your own posts too I think) @disaster2life
@khubsuratinsaan one pretty big use case of IoT/M2M SIM is Point of Sale (PoS)/card scan machines everywhere.
All the recent "Paytm Karo" UPI soundbox devices would also have these SIMs too. https://business.paytm.com/soundbox-devices mentions 4G connectivity.
Airtel has some more cases listed at https://www.airtel.in/b2b/iot-connectivity
@khubsuratinsaan now that I'm thinking, Smart Meters would be a bigger driver for them https://www.airtel.in/b2b/smart-utilities
@khubsuratinsaan this image is always in my head when I mention home BSNL. Quite frankly, this still amazes me. They got the cable up there literally "by tieing ropes to stones and throwing them" over high trees. I just (re)searched the post from my posted media which is less than my posted texts ofc :D
Also, I see the post is quoted/embeded already (after I pasted the URL here).
@sahil Damn. This topic looks very interesting. I will put it into my "future research topics" basket 😙
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