Industry expertise

Telecom market research in India

Network experience, churn and plan research for telecom and broadband operators.

Quick answer

Market Research India is a specialist telecom research consultancy in India. We interview mobile users, retailers, enterprise clients in Marathi, Gujarati, Hindi, Punjabi, Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, Malayalam, Bengali, Odia and English, with field teams in 50 cities and 4 methods matched to how this sector actually buys.

Proposal in 24 hours
Scoped, itemised and fixed-fee.
50 cities, 14 languages
Our own supervised field teams.
Senior-led, NDA-first
A research director on every project.

2,400+

Projects delivered

Cities with field teams

Industries covered

Indian languages

The decisions we help you make

Telecom churn in India is decided by a few seconds of experience repeated hundreds of times: the call that drops at the same junction, the video that buffers in the same room. Network perception lags network reality by about two quarters, and tariff perception lags both.

Why do users port out?
How is 5G being perceived?
What do broadband customers value?
Which network pain points actually drive porting, and which are simply tolerated?
Is 5G a reason to upgrade the plan, or only a reason to expect the same price?

Tell us which of these you are actually facing and the design follows — sample, method and analysis plan are all downstream of the decision.

Who we talk to, and how we reach them

Who you talk to decides what the study can conclude. We treat each audience as a separate recruitment problem rather than as quotas in one sample.

Mobile users
Recruited by random-digit-dial and panel frames across all operators, screened on primary SIM, plan value, data usage band and any porting activity in the last year.
Retailers
Sampled from recharge and handset outlet lists in the chosen circles, screened on monthly activations and operator mix — which is where share shift shows up before it reaches a dashboard.
Enterprise clients
Reached by named-role outreach to IT and network heads, screened on connection count, contract value and renewal window.

Interviews run in Marathi, Gujarati, Hindi, Punjabi, Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, Malayalam, Bengali, Odia and English, with every questionnaire translated and back-translated before fieldwork. Moderators and interviewers are briefed on the telecom category itself, not handed a script — which is the difference between a respondent answering politely and a respondent explaining themselves.

Methods that fit this sector

Twenty methods are available; these four earn their place in this sector most often, and for specific reasons.

What a typical study looks like

A realistic shape for a first study in this sector. Your brief will move the numbers; it rarely moves them by an order of magnitude.

Indicative scope — telecom study

Typical sample: n=3,000 subscribers across 6 circles, 300 retailer interviews and 40 enterprise decision-maker depths
Who we interview: Mobile users, Retailers, Enterprise clients — each recruited against a separate screener rather than drawn from one general sample.
Core methods: CATI Telephone Surveys, Customer Satisfaction & NPS, Brand Health Tracking, B2B Market Research
Fieldwork window: 3–5 weeks
Standard deliverables: Daily progress, Clean datasets, Topline reports, NPS dashboard
Signature output: A circle-level churn-driver model ranking network and care issues by port-out risk
Lead time: 6–8 weeks from sign-off to debrief

Compliance, ethics and data quality

Research in this sector carries obligations that a generic fieldwork house will not have thought about. These are the ones we build into the protocol before the first interview is scheduled.

No call or usage records
We ask about experience and never for call detail records, location history or usage logs. Any subscriber frame used for sampling is handled under agreement and destroyed at close.
Calling preferences respected
Outbound research calling follows registration preferences and permitted calling windows, and respondents are told in the first sentence that nothing is being sold.
Retailer activations stay confidential
Outlet-level activation shares are reported by cluster so that no retailer's numbers can be traced back to their counter.
Verification you can audit
Every mobile user and enterprise client we count is screened against a written definition, de-duplicated, GPS- and timestamp-logged in the field, and re-contacted on a 10% back-check with 10% of audio audited by a supervisor who did not run the interview.

What we will not do on a telecom study

We will not substitute an audience without telling you, quietly loosen a screener to hit a quota, interview anyone who has not understood what they are consenting to, or move identifiable personal data outside India without your written agreement. If the fieldwork cannot be done properly, we say so at proposal stage rather than at debrief.

How we work

Our research process

01
Discovery
We turn your business question into clear research objectives.
02
Design
Sampling, method, questionnaire and discussion guides, translated into local languages.
03
Fieldwork
Supervised field teams with GPS, audio and back-check quality control.
04
Analysis
Statistical and thematic analysis by senior researchers.
05
Insight
Board-ready reports, dashboards and workshops with clear recommendations.

Where the sector concentrates

The Indian cities that matter most for telecom

Telecom is concentrated rather than spread: 0 cities carry most of the sector's weight, so we start there and add the metros that supply the rest of the demand. Each page covers telecom research in that city specifically.

Before you brief us

Frequently asked questions

What does a telecom research project cost in India?

Cost follows the sample, the seniority of the audience and the number of cities. Reaching mobile users costs a fraction of what it costs to reach enterprise clients, so the audience mix moves the number far more than the headline interview count. Send a brief and you get a fixed-fee proposal within 24 hours.

Which cities should a telecom study cover?

Start where the sector concentrates — Mumbai, Delhi NCR, Bangalore, Chennai, Hyderabad — then add markets that match your distribution rather than the national map. Most clients run four to eight cities so results can be compared side by side.

How do you make sure respondents are genuinely retailers?

Each audience has its own written screener and its own frame. Respondents are de-duplicated against past projects, fieldwork is GPS- and timestamp-logged, 10% are re-contacted on a back-check and 10% of audio is audited by a supervisor who did not conduct the interview.

How long does a telecom study take?

Fieldwork of the scope described above runs 3–5 weeks, and the whole project is typically 6–8 weeks from sign-off to debrief. Fieldwork usually begins five to seven working days after sign-off, once screeners and translations are approved.

Which methods suit telecom research best?

For this sector we most often use cati telephone surveys, customer satisfaction & nps, brand health tracking, b2b market research. The right combination depends on whether you need to size something, explain it or test it — a brief that names the decision gets a sharper design than one that names a method.

What safeguards apply to telecom fieldwork?

We ask about experience and never for call detail records, location history or usage logs. Any subscriber frame used for sampling is handled under agreement and destroyed at close. Alongside that, all personal data is collected on informed consent, held in India, pseudonymised before analysis and deleted on an agreed schedule, in line with the DPDP Act, 2023 and the ESOMAR code.

Sector at a glance

Hub cities: 8
Audiences covered: 3
Fieldwork window: 3–5 weeks
Lead time: 6–8 weeks
Proposal: Within 24 hours

See related case studies

Keep exploring

Telecom research, city by city and method by method

Fifty cities, twenty methods and the sectors that sit closest to telecom. Each page is written for that specific combination of market and approach.

Tier 1 metros

Full-scale quantitative fieldwork, viewing-facility groups and senior telecom interviews in the eight largest markets.

Tier 2 growth markets

Forty-two cities where telecom demand is forming fastest, each covered by a supervised local field team.

Show 34 more

Sectors that sit next to this one

These most often appear in the same programme as a telecom study, either as an adjacent market or a shared audience.

All other industries

The rest of the thirty sectors we hold dedicated field and analysis experience in.

Show 17 more

Next step

Make your next telecom decision with evidence.