Summary

  • India’s 2026 migration terms compare the total entry fees and bank guarantees attached to licences being migrated with the amounts required for the corresponding authorisation. A shortfall must be covered; an excess earns no refund or reduction.
  • The replacement authorisation does not erase the old service record. Rollout duties, financial dues, violation findings and penalties remain, while some identifiers, spectrum, certificates and permissions continue under their existing terms.

The conversion has a credit side, but no refund side

A licence-to-authorisation transition sounds like a change of label. India’s migration rules give it a balance-sheet dimension.

The Department of Telecommunications’ migration service asks applicants moving licences to compare two totals: the entry fees already paid across the licences being migrated and the entry fee specified for the relevant new authorisation. If the legacy total is lower, the applicant pays the difference. If it is higher, the portal says the excess is not refunded. The same structure applies to bank guarantees where one is required: a shortfall must be furnished, while a larger aggregate guarantee is not reduced.

The rule does not publish one conversion price for every operator. The amount depends on which licences and services are being mapped to which authorisation and on the applicable fee and guarantee schedule. That distinction matters. The migration is not a universal flat charge, and the public materials do not show the balances of individual applicants.

The asymmetry is nevertheless clear. The transition recognises legacy payments when they fall below the new requirement, but it does not settle an excess in the applicant’s favour. A prior payment can therefore count as a credit up to the new requirement without functioning as a refundable account balance. A guarantee can likewise remain larger than the new specified amount without a corresponding reduction.

That is why the phrase “migration” can understate the work. The applicant needs a controlled crosswalk from each legacy licence to the relevant new service and area, together with the entry-fee total, guarantee total, eligibility record and effective date. Summing the wrong licences, or assuming that several old permissions collapse into one identical scope, would obscure the number that the rules actually ask the applicant to reconcile.

Existing licences are not all on one clock

The Telecommunications Act, 2023, and the rules made under it create a route to migrate existing instruments rather than treating every legacy permission as expired on the day the new framework appears.

DoT’s migration page says a licence, registration or permission granted before the appointed day under the Indian Telegraph Act, 1885, or the Indian Wireless Telegraphy Act, 1933, may continue under its existing terms. Where it has a defined validity period, the old terms and that duration continue; where no definite validity period is given, the page specifies a five-year continuation period from the appointed day. In either case, the holder may apply to migrate to the relevant authorisation, subject to continued eligibility under the new rules.

That is not an unconditional extension for every holder. Eligibility continues to matter, and the migration application requires corporate and financial records, including an auditor’s certificate. The portal’s checklist also calls for governance authority to submit the application and information on capital, net worth and foreign investment where applicable. The shift is from one regulatory instrument to another, but the operator still has to demonstrate that it qualifies for the new one.

DoT says the old application intake for Unified Licences, Unified Licences (VNO), standalone licences, registrations and permissions stopped. It announced that applications for new authorisations and migration would be available through the Authorisation Portal from 25 June 2026. That establishes the portal’s stated start date. It does not establish how many firms have completed migration or how quickly applications are being approved.

Relinquishment is not discharge

The main legal surprise is that surrendering an overlapping licence does not close its liability account.

Rule 8 of the Telecommunications (Authorisation for Provision of Principal Telecommunication Services) Rules, 2026 generally prevents an entity from holding overlapping licences or authorisations. The rule includes a defined exception for one authorisation as a Network Service Operator and one as a Virtual Network Operator for any type of principal telecommunication service in the same service area.

The next part of Rule 8 separates the end of an overlapping instrument from the obligations that arose under it. Rollout duties, other obligations and liabilities, financial dues, violation determinations and any resulting penalties remain applicable under the old terms after relinquishment. The transition changes the governing authorisation for future operation; it does not retrospectively wipe the record attached to the old one.

The rules also preserve some operational state. Allocated telecommunication identifiers, assigned spectrum, compliance certificates and listed permissions continue under the terms on which they were obtained, unless the Central Government determines otherwise in the public interest. Rule 19 ties relinquishment of an overlapping authorisation to the migration’s effective date, while leaving rights and liabilities to the Migration Rules.

The resulting structure is mixed rather than clean. A licence can stop being the active overlapping instrument while selected permissions, resources and historical duties remain legible under their earlier conditions. A migrated entity therefore has to distinguish what changes at the effective date from what continues because the old licence created an obligation or an existing resource allocation.

The annual fee is a separate clock

The entry-fee reconciliation is only one financial layer. Rule 23 of the principal-service rules sets an annual authorisation fee from the effective date. For migration, Rule 23(5) specifies the higher of 8% of adjusted gross revenue or 30% of the applicable entry fee, subject to its stated proviso for migration within twelve months of a licence’s effective date. The rules have a separate calculation where an entity has rights to use assigned access spectrum; that calculation should not be reduced to the general formula.

The one-time comparison and the recurring fee answer different questions. Legacy entry fees and guarantees determine whether the applicant must supply a difference at conversion. The annual fee applies under the new authorisation terms after its effective date. One cannot be substituted for the other, and the public rule alone does not tell an investor what any specific operator will pay: that depends on the applicant’s authorisation, revenue base, licence history and, where relevant, spectrum position.

A board or investor comparing “old licence cost” with “new authorisation cost” would therefore need more than a list of licence names. The calculation needs the service and area attached to each instrument, the old fee and guarantee paid for it, the new schedule, continuing liabilities and the annual fee basis after migration. The rules supply a framework for those comparisons, not a published industry-wide total.

What the public record can establish

The official migration page sets out the available route, the eligibility condition, fee and guarantee reconciliation and the documents requested. The Gazette text supplies the principal-service rules on overlap, continuing liabilities, permissions and annual fees. These materials establish the legal mechanism.

They do not show an audited register of completed migrations, the amount of legacy excess retained by DoT, the aggregate top-ups paid, the time from application to approval, or the post-migration compliance record of individual operators. The reviewed public page did not display such a completed-migration dataset on 12 October 2026. That is a limit of the reviewed public record, not proof that the Department has no internal data or has published none elsewhere.

The distinction matters for claims about reform. A new portal and a set of replacement categories can demonstrate that a migration process exists. They cannot, by themselves, demonstrate that it has reduced compliance costs, accelerated entry, increased competition or improved network deployment. Those outcomes require data from applications and operation under the new terms.

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