As talk about Turk Telekom’s privatization was going on in the form “it will happen”, “it is happening” and “it has happened”, “today” and “tomorrow”, already fifteen months have gone by. Still being the most important player in the Turkish telecommunications sector, everyone in this community is anxious to know the answers to “what has been done?”, “what has changed or has not changed?” with Turk Telekom. Therefore, we forwarded our questions to Dr. Paul Doany, who has been the CEO of Turk Telekom during the past fifteen months.
Turk Telekom’s privatization has been on our agenda since the early 1990s. The digital area advancement realized in 1980s started to decline and with realization of the privatization caused many movements to be put on hold both at Turk Telekom and for the telekomunications sector.
The year 2005 was a very important year from this point. 55% of Turk Telekom’s shares were sold to Oger Telecom, established by Lebanese Kebenon Hariri family’s Dubai-based firm named Saudi Oger. Ever since then we have all been holding our breath and wondering “What is happening at Turk Telekom, what has changed and what has not?” This includes especially the firm’s personnel.
We interviewed Dr. Paul Doany, holding the position Chairman of the Board since November 2005 and General Manager since March 2006 and asked forty (40) questions concerning “what is happening and what will happen” that can be broken down to the following sub-topics:
- Staff and Organizational Issues
- Investments
- ISP, GSM and Long distance carriers
- Local Loop Unbundling and Right of Way
- Customers
- Resellers
- Telecom Italia, British Telecom, TTnet and Avea
- Financial Questions
We will therefore publish the different parts of the interview day by day during the entire coming week . You will also be able to view a brief video clip taken during the interview after tomorrow.
Our first 10 questions were regarding staffing issues. You will recall, starting December 2005 turk-internet.com, being a close pursuer of the topic “staying as a civil servant vs. passing on to the privatized firm” had published articles and explanations on all personel issues (contracted, within scope, outside scope, excusable, convicted). For these reasons we forwarded our questions concerning known issues, engineer head count, situation with Type-1 and Type-2 personnel, new recruits and salary increase to Dr.Doany.
Question – 1 : It has been around fifteen (15) months since the privatization. Can you please provide on overall evaluation, particularly the main organizational changes regarding at Türk Telekom (TT)?
Dr.Paul Doany : First of all I would like to send a statement of appreciation to all the Turk Telekom personnel, many of whom I know follow your web site. In particular I would like to acknowledge the great work in promoting ADSL sales in the year 2005, prior to privatisation, which was a demonstration by TT management and personnel, of what they are capable of achieving across the entire – this entailed a coordinated effort from the HQ in Ankara, along with all the eighty one provincial directorates. In 2006 they also achieved a similarly successful year, despite the challenges of the ‘transition’ period, and the loss of many personnel. I know that in 2007 we will achieve even better results. We will offer wholesale products, as we open the market to even more competition, enabling ADSL service providers to compete for customers throughout our network, and break the record yet again.
We stated earlier that we believe in the ‘step-by-step’ approach, and that we consider 2006 to be a ‘transition’ year, and. This approach may appear to be ‘slow’ at times, but we are confident that we moved at the ‘correct’ pace in 2006. In 2007 we will achieve great results on all fronts (Insallah), making up for the transition period.
Accordingly, 2007 will be the ‘performance build-up’ year. We will seek to introduce many new and challenging projects, in addition to:
- Expanding and upgrading our network;
- Introducing new products/services;
- Finalizing the re-organisational and training plans;
- Streamlining sales/marketing;
- Strengthening our distribution channels;
…. And most importantly, - Improving our customer care service.
Following of that question and interview would be read at Doany: Pay raise for Type-1 Personnel in March -2
Turkish translation of that part at Türk Telekom Özelleştirmesinden 15 Ay Sonra
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