Summary:
TRAI reported that India had 666.09 million urban internet subscribers and 448.08 million rural subscribers at the end of June 2026, with respective quarterly increases of 14.16 million and 7.21 million. Urban areas recorded 129.03 subscriptions per 100 people, compared with 49.07 in rural regions, highlighting the persistent digital connectivity gap. TRAI noted that these figures measure subscriptions relative to population rather than the number of unique internet users, while some earlier growth reflected the reclassification of Bharti Airtel’s M2M SIMs.
According to the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India’s (TRAI) quarterly performance report, urban India recorded 666.09 million internet subscribers at the end of June 2026, while rural India had 448.08 million. Compared with March, urban subscriptions increased by 14.16 million and rural subscriptions grew by 7.21 million.
Urban-Rural Subscriber Comparison
The urban internet subscriber base exceeded the rural total by 218.01 million in June. In March, urban and rural subscriptions stood at 651.93 million and 440.87 million, respectively, according to TRAI data. The quarterly figures include Bharti Airtel’s machine-to-machine (M2M) SIMs from the quarter ending March 2026, meaning part of the increase between December 2025 and March 2026 resulted from reclassification rather than solely from new subscriptions.
Internet Subscriptions per 100 People
TRAI recorded 129.03 internet subscriptions per 100 people in urban areas in June, compared with 126.8 in March. In rural regions, the figure increased from 48.31 to 49.07 over the same period, leaving an urban-rural difference of 79.96 subscriptions per 100 people. These figures represent subscriptions relative to population, not the proportion of residents using the internet or the number of unique individuals connected.
