Hindi
Abhay Deol in IFFLA jury
NEW DELHI: Actor-producer Abhay Deol has been included in the jury for the 13th annual Indian Film Festival of Los Angeles.
The Festival is being held from 8 to 12 April at the ArcLight Hollywood.
The other narrative jury members are filmmaker Sean Baker, HFPA member and frequent Board director Yoram Kahana, Warner Bros executive vice president (physical production) Ravi Mehta, and author and film curator Berenice Reynaud.
The shorts jury include actor Danny Pudi, Outfest Director of Programming Lucy Mukerjee-Brown, Sundance Shorts Programmer Lisa Ogdie, and Heather Morris Washington, Manager of the Emerging Writers Fellowship at Universal.
Aditya Vikram Sengupta’s debut feature Labour Of Love following one day in the life of a married couple has been added to the festival’s lineup. It screens on 10 April.
Other films include Jai Ho by Delhi-based filmmaker Umesh Aggarwal who had attended the premiere of the film in New York earlier this year.
The world premiere of British comedy One Crazy Thing is the centerpiece this year. The opening night film is Haraamkhor, helmer Shlok Sharma’s debut starring Nawazuddin Siddiqui, and the closing film is Dhanak by Nagesh Kukunoor.
Other highlights are Danis Tanovic’s Tigers, Cannes entry Titli by Kanu Behl and the Los Angeles premiere of Miss India America.
IFFLA will unspool 25 films, including four world premieres, seven North American bows, two American and 10 Los Angeles preems from not just India, but also the US, the United Kingdom, France, Germany and Cuba, in 10 languages including English, Spanish and German.
Directed by Amit Gupta, One Crazy Thing stars Ray Panthaki and Daisy Bevan and centers on a man struggling to overcome the notoriety from his sex tape.
Tanovic’s Tigers stars Bollywood star Emraan Hashmi and is about the true-life tale of the salesman who took on a drug company that marketed a deadly baby formula.
Titli is a coming-of-age story starring Shashank Arora; while Miss India Americastars Tiya Sircar and Hannah Simone in the story of a woman who enters a beauty pageant after losing her boyfriend to a former Miss India America.
IFFLA Artistic Director Jasmine Jaisinghani said, “Many of the films at this year’s IFFLA look at contemporary youth from diverse backgrounds, united in their creative ways of overcoming life’s situations. The palpable energy of youth spirit runs throughout our film lineup, and these stories take you on an adventurous journey.”
Hindi
India’s telecom subscribers cross 1.32 billion in February 2026
Broadband base swells past 1.06 billion as Jio and Airtel tighten grip on the market.
MUMBAI: India’s telecom sector is ringing in steady growth once again adding millions of new connections every month while the race for broadband supremacy continues to heat up like a fiercely contested cricket match. According to the latest data released by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) on 1 April 2026, the total telephone subscriber base in the country reached 1,321.31 million at the end of February 2026. This marked a net addition of 7.31 million subscribers during the month, translating into a monthly growth rate of 0.56 per cent.
Wireless subscribers (including mobile and Fixed Wireless Access) stood at 1,273.31 million, registering a net addition of 6.97 million and a growth rate of 0.55 per cent. Within this, urban wireless connections grew to 730.75 million (growth 0.70 per cent), while rural wireless subscribers reached 542.56 million (growth 0.35 per cent).
Wireline subscribers, though much smaller in scale, showed slightly faster growth. The total wireline base increased to 47.99 million, with a net addition of 0.34 million and a monthly growth rate of 0.70 per cent. Urban areas continued to dominate wireline connections with a share of 89.41 per cent.
Overall tele-density in India improved to 92.66 per cent. Urban tele-density stood at 150.68 per cent, while rural tele-density edged up to 60.02 per cent.
The broadband subscriber base crossed a significant milestone, reaching 1,059.05 million at the end of February 2026. This reflected a healthy net addition of 6.33 million subscribers and a monthly growth rate of 0.60 per cent from January’s figure of 1,052.72 million.
Segment-wise, mobile wireless access continued to drive the majority of growth with 996.52 million subscribers. Fixed Wireless Access (including 5G FWA) added 16.51 million, while wired broadband stood at 46.02 million.
Reliance Jio Infocomm Ltd. maintained its commanding lead with 519.64 million broadband subscribers. Bharti Airtel Ltd. followed with 364.14 million, Vodafone Idea Ltd. with 129.36 million, Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd. with 28.70 million, and Atria Convergence Technologies Ltd. with 2.38 million.
Together, these top five players command a massive 98.60 per cent share of the total broadband market.
In the wireless (mobile) segment, private operators continued to dominate with 92.59 per cent market share, leaving public sector undertakings (BSNL and MTNL) with just 7.41 per cent.
Out of the total 1,257.29 million wireless (mobile) subscribers, 1,177.60 million were active on the peak Visitor Location Register (VLR) date, representing an impressive 93.66 per cent activity rate. Bharti Airtel led in this metric with 99.42 per cent of its subscribers active.
Meanwhile, 14.47 million subscribers submitted requests for Mobile Number Portability (MNP) in February, indicating healthy competition and customer churn across zones.
While urban areas still lead in absolute numbers, rural connectivity is slowly catching up. Rural wireless tele-density stood at 59.46 per cent, compared with the much higher urban figure of 142.32 per cent.
Fixed Wireless Access using 5G technology also showed promising traction, growing to 11.93 million subscribers. Reliance Jio and Bharti Airtel are the primary players driving this segment.
The data paints a picture of a maturing yet still rapidly expanding telecom ecosystem. With total telephone subscribers now well past the 1.32 billion mark and broadband users comfortably above 1.06 billion, India continues to solidify its position as one of the world’s largest and most dynamic digital markets.
From bustling city streets to remote villages, more Indians are staying connected than ever before proving that when it comes to telecom, the country’s appetite for growth shows no signs of hanging up anytime soon.
