4G technologies ‘to be active very soon’

ISTANBUL - Reuters

Transportation Minister Yıldırım says 4G technologies will be introduced. DHA Photo

The Turkish government plans to launch 4G technologies in mobile communication, Transportation Minister Binali Yıldırım said yesterday during a Turkcell press meeting.

“It is just a matter of short time for us to launch these technologies in Turkey,” Yıldırım said.

He also said the ministry expected Turkey’s mobile operators to use the same infrastructure.

The biggest operators in Turkey, Turkcell, Vodafone and Avea, paid around 1.97 billion Turkish Liras to obtain licenses for 3G technologies in 2008, enabling them to significantly increase their revenues from both mobile Internet and mobile data.

Turkcell CEO Süreyya Ciliv had previously said that he expected 4G technologies in mobile communication to be fully active just after 2015.

“There is no exact date about when the 4G technologies infrastructure will be fully operational in Turkey, but we expect this will happen by the beginning of 2016. The Information and Communications Technologies Authority of Turkey (BTK) and the Transport and Communication Ministry will set the exact date,” Ciliv said at a press meeting held by the company yesterday to showcase the results of their 4G laboratory tests in August.

Other operators, including Vodafone, have previously announced that they have reached very high speeds.

There were around 40.3 million 3G subscribers in Turkey at the end of 2012, according to official numbers.