The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India will come out with a consultation paper within two weeks on the operationalisation of the recent judgement by the Telecom Disputes Settlement Appellate Tribunal.

This was disclosed by Arun Shourie, minister for divestments, communications and IT in a press briefing after inaugurating the electronic transfer system at the post office in Mulund, eastern suburbs of Central Mumbai.

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Shourie said the department of telecommunications was in discussion with Trai on various issues like implementation of the TDSAT judgement which included the licence fees and allowed wireless in local loop services.

"I am working with Pradip Baijal and other officials so that we reduce issues to specifics," Shourie said.

Pointing out that the unified license was the only way out for the industry, Shourie said that the controversy would still continue and one must find a solution.

"We will have to untangle many knots and it will take several months," the minister said.

Elaborating on the unified license, Shourie stated, "I have requested Deepak Parekh, chairman of HDFC and KV Kamath of ICICI to work towards unified license so that the financial steps are taken to ensure a level-playing field between various service operators".

He claimed that the entire transition towards a unified license would take at least two years.

He admitted that the issue of license fees would have to be re-looked as the licenses were allotted over a period of time and with certain assumptions.

The cellular operators who were earlier allotted licenses had to pay huge entry fees and they have been opposing the consultation paper on the unified license by Trai.

Shourie ruled out merger of Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited with Mahanagar Telephone Nigam Limited.

On divestment of BSNL, the minister stated that there were no big companies in India to bid for BSNL.

Shourie asked MTNL to explore alternatives such as being a major player in telecom in other countries.

"MTNL already has presence in Nepal. It can explore countries like Mauritius, Kenya and Somaliya, while it has opened up five training centres in Afghanistan. I am also going to Myanmar on August 24 and we would look at opportunities there," Shourie said.

He pointed out that steps should be immediately taken as MTNL had already lost as many as 59,000 customers last year to private sector.

Diagonising the problems of the two PSU telecom majors, Shourie opined that MTNL had to redefine its character and BSNL had to do something about its financial problems.