India added 4.20 active million mobile connections in April 2017, taking the total active mobile connection base to 1.01 billion, according to TRAI's latest telecom subscription numbers. Telecom operators including Idea, Vodafone, Airtel, BSNL and Jio reported an increase in their base. However, all other telcos (MTNL, MTS, Aircel, Telenor, RCOM and Tata Docomo) have lost subscribers. Airtel added the highest number of active connections (2.63 million) in the month. Airtel's active connection base stood at 268.37 million. New entrant Reliance Jio, however, added only 375,556 active connection during April, taking its total active connection base to 80.12 million. This is only 71.19% of Jio's overall mobile connection base which stood at 112.55 million. This is a slower growth for Jio in the month of April; in March it added 4.1 million active mobile connections. Note that the active connection base of Jio fell from a 73.56% share as of February to 71.19% in April. The Active Connection data includes users roaming on another telecom operators network. For example, Airtel, Idea and Vodafone have Intra-circle roaming arrangements which allow 3G users from Airtel to roam on an Idea 3G network. These are counted as separate mobile connections, and there is also multi-SIM usage, so the number of connections should not be seen as active users. This explains why Idea Cellular has over 100% active users. It's worth noting that this month, Idea surpassed Vodafone in total active connections. The two companies are merging, and Vodafone still has higher total connections. RCOM, Tata Tele, MTS,…
