The operator aims to offer access speeds of up to 375 Mbps
Turkish mobile operator Turkcell expects to launch LTE-A services in the country in 2016. Atac Tansug, the company’s fixed network director confirmed that the 4G service will be commercially available starting July 1.
The company said the LTE mobile Internet offering will reach speeds of 375 megabits per second. Turkcell secured LTE spectrum in an auction carried out by the government in August, at that time acquiring mobile spectrum in the 800 MHz, 900 MHz, 1800 MHz, 2.1 GHz and 2.6 GHz bands. At the LTE auction, Turkcell obtained a total of 172 megahertz of mobile spectrum in these five bands.
Japanese company NEC has recently announced orders for its iPASOLINK iX all outdoor ultra-compact microwave radio systems from Turkcell. NEC’s iPASOLINK iX will be used for the operator’s LTE network infrastructure.
iPASOLINK iX is a radio transmission system that supports frequencies from the 6 GHz band to the 42 GHz band and can be applied to a wide range of networks, from access to aggregation.
Turkcell ended the second quarter of the year with a total of 34 million mobile subscribers, down 1.7% compared to the year-ago period. The telco ended the period with 1.3 million fixed subscribers.
Turkcell’s 2G network reached a population coverage of 99.85% at the end of June, while its 3G network covered 92.06% of the Turkish population.
European telcos return to revenue growth in 2016, Moody’s said
Revenue from European telecom operators is expected to grow by 1-2% in the next 12-18 months as customers increase their demand for broadband, according to a recent study by Moody’s Investors Service.
“Increasing demand for broadband, improved consumer spending capacity and a change in focus from price competition to service quality leading to price increases will underpin European telecommunications service providers return to revenue growth in 2016,” Moody’s analyst Carlos Winzer said.
While the outlook for the African, Middle East and Turkish telecom markets is stable, negative pressure on revenue growth could build in some commodity-driven markets where GDP growth is slowing, including Kuwait, Oman, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates and countries like Nigeria in Africa, Moody’s said.
The report also revealed that the outlook for Russian mobile operators MTS, MegaFon and Vimpelcom remains negative as the economic crisis in Russia continues to drive down profitability.
