“Broadband grew almost sevenfold in a decade. Mobile subscriptions went nowhere.”
Kolkata Digital Infrastructure
TRAI subscriber counts for the Kolkata telecom service area (QE Mar 2015 to QE Jun 2026) and CPGRAMS grievance statistics, each labelled with its geographic scope
In TRAI's Kolkata telecom service area, mobile subscriptions have gone nowhere in a decade. There were 22.56 million wireless subscribers in March 2015 and exactly 22.56 million in December 2024. The count peaked at 29.07 million in December 2017 and has drifted down since. Broadband is the real story. It rose from 2.87 million to 19.37 million over the same period, an increase of 574.9%, and reached 21.01 million by June 2026. Narrowband connections all but disappeared as users moved to broadband.
Two common claims about Kolkata do not hold up. TRAI does not publish a tele-density figure for Kolkata; the only official figure is for West Bengal including Kolkata, 83.78 connections per 100 people in June 2026. And CPGRAMS, the government grievance portal, publishes no Kolkata figure. The Government of West Bengal's own CPGRAMS caseload is a poor one: between January and November 2024 it disposed of 71 of 38,654 grievances (0.18%), the highest pendency of any State or Union Territory.
About this data
What this page shows
Wireless (mobile), broadband, narrowband and wireline subscribers in the Kolkata Licensed Service Area (LSA) at every point that has been traced to a TRAI report: March 2015, each December from 2015 to 2025, and June 2026. Other quarters are left out rather than estimated. The page also compares Kolkata with the Delhi, Mumbai and Tamil Nadu service areas in June 2026, and shows CPGRAMS grievance figures at two scopes, national central ministries and the Government of West Bengal, which are never combined. Wireline did not decline: it fell from 1.00 million (March 2015) to 0.67 million (December 2019 and 2020), then rose to 1.15 million (December 2024) and 1.52 million (June 2026). In the latest monthly data (September 2026) the Kolkata LSA had 23,187,283 wireless (mobile) subscribers including M2M SIMs. Kolkata was the only service area to lose wireless subscribers in February 2026 and July 2026.
Where the data comes from
Subscriber counts come from the TRAI Indian Telecom Services Performance Indicator Reports (quarterly), from QE March 2015 to the QE June 2026 report, plus TRAI's monthly subscription press releases for 2026. The West Bengal tele-density figures are from Table 1.4 of the December 2024 and June 2026 reports. West Bengal government grievance figures come from the DARPG CPGRAMS Monthly Reports for States/UTs for November 2024 (No. 28) and July 2026 (No. 48). National annual totals for central ministries come from a Lok Sabha written reply of 2 April 2025, as reported by PTI. This is a secondary source because the Parliament PDF could not be reached. The DARPG central ministries report for November 2024 gives an average closing time of 13 days for that month.
Limitations worth knowing
The Kolkata LSA is a telecom licensing area, not the municipal boundary, and subscriptions count SIMs and connections, not people. TRAI publishes tele-density only by state (“population data/projections are available state-wise only”), so any Kolkata tele-density figure is not an official statistic. There is no Chennai service area; Chennai is reported inside Tamil Nadu. The Delhi service area includes the Ghaziabad, Noida, Gurgaon and Faridabad exchange areas, which pushes its tele-density above 300. From December 2025 Bharti Airtel counts M2M SIMs as wireless subscribers (TRAI revised figures back to June 2025), so recent wireless figures are not strictly comparable with earlier ones. CPGRAMS disposal rates measure cases closed, not complainants satisfied. The West Bengal government's rate rose from 0.18% (January to November 2024) to 49.5% (January to July 2026), but these are partial-year snapshots, not an annual series.
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