New Delhi, April 1 -- Loss-making telecom operator Vodafone Idea has added subscribers after a gap of almost five years, according to data released by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) on Wednesday and Mint's analysis of its previous subscriber data from the regulator.

In February, the company added a net of 21,927 users, taking its base to 198.4 million, Trai data showed. The subscriber data includes both mobile users and machine-to-machine (M2M) connections, which are SIM cards used in devices like smart meters and internet of things (IoT) devices.

The marginal improvement can be attributed to the telecom operator's network expansion for both its 4G and 5G networks.

After a prolonged period of subscriber losses, the mo...