Newsletter July 2026

Dear Friends,

Greetings from the Centre for Regulatory Governance.

Some major changes in the regulatory space for the telecom sector in India came into effect in June. The Department of Telecommunications (DoT) of the Government of India has begun accepting applications from

a). Existing Telecom Service Providers to migrate their existing licenses to the terms and conditions of authorisation under the Telecommunications Act, 2023, (think R Jio, Airtel and Vodafone)

b). New applications are being solicited for providing new telecommunication services (think Starlink)

Clearly, these are hugely significant developments from the Regulatory point of view. The Act passed in 2023 was supposed to allow this earlier. But as the Press Release from DoT issued in June notes, these applications for Unified Licenses, Unified License (VNO), Standalone Licenses, Registrations, Permissions, and No Objection Certificates were held up effective November 10, 2025. Why? Anyone who has tracked the Indian telecom sector would know these are investments with several billion rupees involved. The companies in the past have waged terrific battles over the rights, so the DoT wanted to be sure there would not be a repeat this time.

Some of the clauses of the Telecom Act of 2023 had become operational, but the nub of the rules notified this month replaces the bulk of the licensing framework for telecom operators. Instead of the term “licensing framework”, a simpler term, authorisation, enters the law; some others also simplify the language to reduce the compliance costs and time for telcos and, more importantly, those for the smaller Internet Service Providers. In terms of new compliance, anti-spam enforcement makes an appearance under the Act. The rules will now be read by the boards of the companies to decide if they wish to migrate to this authorisation regime now, or wait until their licenses expire and then apply afresh.

The decisions have immense implications. The benefits are that the ancien regime of the Indian Telegraph Act, 1885 and the Wireless Telegraphy Act, 1933, has become history. Many of their provisions and the consequent reporting made it difficult to realise value from possible mergers and amalgamations in the sector.

At the same time, competition will intensify with the new Act. In the rules, as notified, there is no reference to the Global Mobile Personal Communications by satellites, the Starlink proposal, which means competitors have time to devise their own alternative strategies. This shall be a keenly contested space, just like the CDMA versus GSM technology battle at the turn of the century.

The new Act and its rules do not change the framework for interception orders, a huge issue for privacy advocates. Since there are no key deviations from the existing system, the pattern to watch out for is how the rules are implemented under the new Act.

The rules, etc also raise concerns about the role of the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India. Its role seems to have shrunk to that of measuring mobile network quality in different telecom circles instead of any policy role. While the purpose of setting up the regulator in 1997 was to implement the various Telecom Acts via the issue of rules under them, there is no evidence that the DoT, this time around, even bothered with these niceties. This needs to be sorted fast for the regulator to reclaim its position as the guide for the evolution of the sector.

Rather, as per media reports, the government is contemplating winding up the 37-year-old Digital Communications Commission (earlier Telecom Commission). The media report notes this is a response to “overlap in work between DoT members and advisers as well as delays in policy decisions due to the unavailability of other members”. None of these is weighty reasons of principle, but instead a procedural. The commission, consisting of the secretaries of the telecommunications, the department of expenditure and some others, was set up in 1989 to guide the DoT to get government approval, prepare the department’s annual budget and implement the government’s policy in telecom. It got more famous for turf battles with Trai and was used by the DoT to get its way, including the AGR dispute that the government is slowly unravelling. The supposed predatory pricing of telecom services was never discussed by the Commission. So it is not clear what the Commission achieved. It would be most fair if, before the winding up, the government issues a paper to explain what has been the track record of the Commission. It would help in developing traction for the regulatory score sheet of the government. The winding up would give more playing space to the DoT and less space for the Trai.

However, before we close the issue, here is a chart tracking the telecom status in India: 

“Indian Telecom Services Performance Indicator Report” 

for the Quarter January - March, 2026

* % growth on an year-on-year basis at the end of QE Mar-26.

** The density is mentioned on % basis

From this month, we are excited to launch our new regulatory watch section on AI. It will be steered by Leela Tarang Padagu, one of JGU’s brightest faculty members in law. It would bring all regulatory news on AI to one place. We can assure you these developments are expanding massively.

Our idea to club them together is to develop in the seemingly disparate news and press releases, common threads, consistency of approach and point out inconsistencies therein as befits CRG’s basic mandate. To understand regulatory issues in depth and interpret those for our readers, lucidly. 

For some of the other topics we covered this month, here is the link. We look forward to your comments, keenly.

With Regards 

Subhomoy Bhattacharjee

CCI: In his article "The Branded Generics Trap: Are Indian Consumers abused & exploited?", Leela Tarang Krishna Paladugu sets a compelling tone right from the start as he notes "Competition Authorities all-across the world, often distanced themselves from the concept of price regulation, citing their primary roles as market regulators; watchdogs of anti-competitive practices." His insights have been featured in our Regulatory News Summary, and we welcome your thoughts and discussions on the topic.

NPCI: NPCI (The National Payments Corporation of India) hosts the UPI platform and is the quasi regulator for the Fintech sector. It has built its own small language AI model called FiMI (Finance Model for India), which has been rolled out as an NPCI UPI Help Assistant this year, acting as an AI-powered conversational support system. As it gathers increased users, the NPCI chief Mr Dilip Asbe has also called for a regulatory framework for the sector.

POWER SECTOR: Where should the focus of regulators be? - this has been discussed in our News Summary by Mr Parvesh Kumar Sharma, an advocate and legal and regulatory expert on the sector. This relates to the news where UP consumers were asked to pay 10% fuel surcharge on June power bills. The adverse impact of surcharges without proper scrutiny by regulators has been discussed in the report.

SEBI: Introduction of more regulatory changes were initiated by Securities and Exchange Board of India. This time, the regulatory changes were directed at open market buybacks, Mutual Funds, AIF and Municipal bonds - aimed at improving market efficiency, easing compliance and strengthening investor protection.

Apart from these. there have been some other important developments related to NCLT, shell companies, IRDAI, SEBI and AI in our "Latest News" section of our website: https://crg.jgu.edu.in/.