22.18 Telecom

By Ravindra Bagale Last updated: 6 October 2026

Circle interviews ask churn, ARPU (average revenue per user), and whether complaints closed inside the SLA. SIM cards issued is the classic vanity metric. This is a fictional circle, not a result of any operator in Maharashtra.

KPI	What the number means	Who uses it	Action it drives
Churn %	Subscribers who left divided by subscribers at the start of the month.	Circle head	A high churn stops the SIM drive. Those people are already leaving.
ARPU	Revenue in the month divided by subscribers at the start.	Circle finance	A low ARPU with many new SIMs often means empty activations.
SLA met %	Complaints resolved inside the promise divided by complaints.	Network and care	A backlog is technicians, not a new offer.

Fictional sample rows. One month. Type these rows into a new sheet from cell A1, press Ctrl + T, and name the table tblCircle (Table Design › Table Name).

City	Subscribers	Churned	Revenue	Complaints	Resolved in SLA	New SIMs
Pune	10,000	300	₹20,00,000	400	360	800
Nashik	6,000	120	₹15,00,000	180	170	200
Kolhapur	4,000	280	₹6,00,000	220	110	500
Nagpur	8,000	160	₹20,00,000	300	270	300
Solapur	3,000	90	₹7,50,000	100	90	80
Sambhaji Nagar	5,000	250	₹8,00,000	260	130	600

Excel formulas for the whole file (type them in empty cells below or beside the table):

KPI	Excel formula	Result	Number format
Churn %	`=SUM(tblCircle[Churned])/SUM(tblCircle[Subscribers])`	3.3%	`0.0%`
ARPU	`=SUM(tblCircle[Revenue])/SUM(tblCircle[Subscribers])`	₹212.50	`₹#,##0.00`
SLA met %	`=SUM(tblCircle[Resolved in SLA])/SUM(tblCircle[Complaints])`	77.4%	`0.0%`

Calculated columns (one result per row). Click the first empty column of the table, type the header, then the formula. The Table fills every row by itself.

New column	Formula in the first row
Churn %	`=[@Churned]/[@Subscribers]`
ARPU	`=[@Revenue]/[@Subscribers]`
SLA met %	`=[@[Resolved in SLA]]/[@Complaints]`

Expected result per row:

City	Churn %	ARPU	SLA met %
Pune	3.0%	₹200.00	90.0%
Nashik	2.0%	₹250.00	94.4%
Kolhapur	7.0%	₹150.00	50.0%
Nagpur	2.0%	₹250.00	90.0%
Solapur	3.0%	₹250.00	90.0%
Sambhaji Nagar	5.0%	₹160.00	50.0%

One city with SUMIFS. Churn % for Pune only:

=SUMIFS(tblCircle[Churned],tblCircle[City],"Pune")/SUMIFS(tblCircle[Subscribers],tblCircle[City],"Pune")

Result for Pune: 3.0%. Change "Pune" to a cell reference (for example $K$1) and add a drop-down, and the same formula answers for any city.

	Good KPI	Vanity metric
From the same rows	Kolhapur churn 7.0% and SLA 50.0%	Kolhapur 500 new SIMs (Pune's 800 is the same trap)
Why	The circle is losing subscribers and half the complaints missed the promise.	The activation card says growth. ARPU is the lowest in the file.

What the manager does. The Nashik circle lead is the pattern in this file: low churn, higher ARPU, complaints mostly inside SLA. Do not give Nashik a target of 800 SIMs to match Pune. The Pune lead looks at the 300 who left and the 40 complaints outside SLA, and does not add a SIM stall. The Kolhapur lead stops the activation drive until the 110 missed complaints are cleared. Sambhaji Nagar is the same shape: 600 new SIMs, churn 250 ÷ 5,000 = 5.0%, SLA 130 ÷ 260 = 50.0%.

Practice workbook and guide: Telecom dashboard workbook (Excel) · How to build the Telecom dashboard in Excel. The workbook data is also fictional.

Ravindra Bagale's Tip

ARPU divides revenue by subscribers, not by new SIMs. Decide whether you use start or average subscribers and write it in the title.