Turkey has tightened government control over telecommunications in recent weeks, preceding its moves with official statistics that seemed to vindicate its monopolistic market, though it ranks poorly among its peers by independent measures.
After persistent lobbying by Vodafone for the Turkish government to break up state-owned Turk Telecom when its monopolistic concession to run Turkey’s fixed telecoms infrastructure runs out in 2026, the government did the opposite. It renewed the concession for another 24 years, preserving its ownership of the fibre communications infrastructure that both it and its customers use to sell competing services. Vodafone Turkey, one of three mobile operators, is the only foreign – and only private – telecoms operator with a government concession to run national infrastructure.
Almost simultaneously, the Turkish Ministry of Transport and Infrastructure announced the start of a delayed 5G auction that will permit bids only from the three incumbent operators: Vodafone, Turk Telecom and Turkcell, the latter of which the state is the largest single shareholder. Vodafone wanted Turk Telecom’s national fixed communications infrastructure turned over to a joint venture between it and the two state operators because, it asserted, the state’s de facto monopoly had stunted its development.
Comms routes
Turk Telecom meanwhile advanced the nation’s strategy to become the primary comms route between Europe and the Middle East, North Africa and Asia, announcing plans to build fibre infrastructure in Turkish Northern Cyprus, which it intends to become a transit route for international cables it is running from Iraq and beyond, across Turkey, and up through the Balkans, into a trans-European network of cables it acquired from a Hungarian telco 20 years ago. Turk Telecom International has since established routes into the Arabian Gulf, primarily via Iraq, and on to Asia.
As Iraq announced another, United Arab Emirates-financed branch of that terrestrial route through Turkey in August, the Turkish government reportedly disrupted a ship surveying for a submarine cable under a rival, Saudi-backed, Greek plan to route east-west internet traffic from Asia, through Saudi Arabia and Israel, and on to France via the southern, Greek-aligned democratic Republic of Cyprus.
At home, the government has invested $17bn in national fibre infrastructure (“and other growth sectors”) – a condition of Turk Telecom’s concession renewal – to build a core network both to power the 5G the country wants to aid industrial transformation and strengthen its position as a Eurasian transit hub.
Turkish ICT regulator BTK preceded these announcements in July with statistics that highlighted a surge in investment last year, and double-digit growth in the extent and quality of communications services delivered to its own people in the past five years, by a variety of measures. It said both fixed and mobile broadband networks have become more extensive, more widely used and of higher quality.
The income of Turkey’s telecoms operators has doubled in five years, and they have invested twice as much in infrastructure, BTK announced in its annual data bulletin.
The national fibre-optic network has consequently grown by 42% since 2020, and the proportion of fibre in all fixed broadband connections has increased by two-thirds. Subscribers to fibre broadband have doubled, while the number of subscriptions to faster fixed broadband connections (35-100Mbps) has increased fourfold. Subscriptions to mobile broadband relative to population are at 89%, a tenth more than 2020, and with those comprised almost entirely of faster 4.5G connections, the mobile market is “saturated”.
Turkish broadband infrastructure below par
But the state of Turkey’s infrastructure is poor, according to independent sources, and its people are lumbered with inferior services. Most Turkish internet traffic goes over a small number of fixed broadband subscriptions, while its extensive mobile networks serve all but the largest cities poorly.
Turkish subscriptions to fixed broadband were the lowest in Europe in 2024, according to data published by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) in June, and half as common as those in more developed countries.
Its mobile broadband subscriptions per 100 people were the lowest in the OECD last year. The speed of fixed broadband connections was between 50% and 60% lower than the OECD average at the end of 2023, with connections above 100Mbps amounting to barely 3% of all subscriptions. Of the fixed broadband it did have, a third was fibre, lower than the OECD average of almost half, though above that of some countries with stronger copper broadband networks, such as Britain, the US and Germany.
Where Turkey has invested in its national infrastructure, it has served major cities to the neglect of outer regions. This is common, according to the OECD. Yet average download speeds for fixed broadband connections outside of Turkey’s major cities were up to 40% lower than the national average, worst only after Columbia among 34 developed countries, according to another study the OECD published in July.
The disparity in its mobile service was among the least worst in the OECD. Yet download speeds on Turkey’s mobile networks were below 40Mbps countrywide as of late 2024, ranking it almost bottom, though its rural networks bettered those in Britain and Ireland. Turkey’s investment, meanwhile, has been middling compared to other OECD countries since 2018.
Turkey is moreover the only country among 38 OECD members without 5G, OECD head of connectivity Alexia Gonzalez Fanfalone, told Computer Weekly.
“It is true that Turkey is lagging behind with respect to several broadband indicators compared to the OECD average,” she said, referring to its insubstantial fixed and mobile broadband networks, and their low speeds. “[It] has significant gaps in broadband performance across regions.”
Though fibre constitutes a lower share of Turkey’s fixed broadband connections than most OECD countries, its investment has grown since 2024, she said. A substantial fibre network is a prerequisite for 5G, as is permitting operators access to mid-range radio frequencies. Turkey has been slow to do both.
Hamstrung by lack of competition
OECD legal instruments, to which Turkey is held, prescribe both competition and investment because, it maintains, connectivity thrives only in competitive telecoms markets.
Concerns that OECD might have about Turkey’s market are mitigated by the independence of its comms regulator, BTK, said Gonzalez Fanfalone. It is “agnostic” about state-owned telecoms firms as long as the regulator maintains “proper arm’s length” between policy-making and regulation.
Serdil Yalçın Daşer, deputy secretary general of Telkoder, the Turkish Competitive Telco Operators Association, said lacking competition had caused the country’s infrastructure to be insubstantial. Just 15% of Turkey’s entire telecoms market is held by companies other than the four fixed and mobile concessionaires, she said.
“Nobody in Turkish politics wants competition in Turkey. There is enough legislation. On paper, all the rules are compatible with EU legislation. But the execution of that legislation is problematic,” said Yalçın Daşer.
“Competition has to be promoted politically. [Otherwise], there is no functioning market. The whole market and end-users are punished,” she said.
Anas Naim, managing director for Middle East and Turkey at Orange Business, who works to upgrade Turkish industry with comms systems that would do better for 5G, said he had, in the past two years, witnessed a marked international expansion among Turkish firms, to Iraq and Egypt in particular, and a big increase in demand for comms bandwidth to Frankfurt, where they access cloud computing systems of hyperscalers such as Amazon Web Services. Frankfurt is a primary link on Turk Telecom’s international network.
Singing the praises of Turkey’s fibre
Advocating in June for its concession to be extended, Turk Telecom CEO Ümit Önal told journalists assembled at its Istanbul headquarters that by the measure of FTTH/B (fibre to the home/building), Turkey is above the European average.
Turk Telecom has installed fibre in “every corner” of Turkey’s 81 provinces, he told journalists. Its average fibre connection speed is 358Mbps.
“We are not trying to manipulate public opinion on this issue,” he said, adding that Turk Telecom had applied for its concession to be extended, and was working with the government to finalise the deal.
“As the founder, developer and operator of Turkey’s fixed internet infrastructure, we are already saddled with this mission. Our infrastructure is Turkey’s infrastructure. We are offering our fibre investments throughout our country … we reach not only the centres of major cities, but also the most remote corners. We are at the point of connecting Turkey to the world. We are doing all of this with our fibre investments,” said Önal.
Turkey’s fibre to the home is, however, only 8%, and ranks 61st out of 89 countries, eighth from bottom in Europe, according to data Önal cited from industry lobby FTTH Council Europe in March. The rest was FTTB, fibre to the building that is then “bottlenecked” with copper wire and ethernet cables to individual apartments.
BTK, Turk Telecom, Vodafone Turkey and FTTH Council Europe were not prepared to comment.
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