Telecommunications Board made the long-awaiting meeting today, and after long hours, decision made to nullify the awarding of 3G licenses. 3G licence auction was held on September 7. Turkcell was the sole attendant with bid of EUR 321 million (USD440 million) for the A type licence
5-member counsil made the decision with the reason of :
Insufficient competition medium during the bidding process and in the case of Turkcell has the 3G licence, the competition medium won’t be granted.
And an interesting point in the decision is, for the next bidding process, even if only one company’s attendance will be sufficient and the auction will not be canceled out again.
Turkcell’s competitors, Vodafone and Avea did not join the bidding process due to number portability was not working yet in Turkey. Early of this year, when regulator issued the rules, Turkcell had carried out this to the court. Since that time, number portability issue still is not solved. Avea and Vodafone are claiming, in this situation, competition would work against them.
Turkcell is the leading GSM operator of Turkey. Due to some reasons, Telsim (now Vodafone) couldn’t enter the market earlier.. And 3rd licence owner Avea, due to the problems with Telecom Italia, couldn’t make investment for a long time. So, Turkcell has 60% of the market today.
Some sector analysts are thinking, Avea and Vodafone are not willing to make 3G investment in any condition, due to their low profile customer base. The cream level of the mobile customer base in Turkey belongs to Turkcell. So, that’s why Avea and Vodafone are insisting for the number portability.
Some other analysts are believing, Vodafone and Avea, even in number portability presence, won’t be willing to make investment since they are already making a lot of investment to catch Turkcell’s present 2G infrastructure. For the last 3-4 years, Telsim were not making investment, since fighting with Nokia and Motorola, additionaly experienced an owner changing. Avea’s problems were different. Telecom Italia and Isbank management systems were different, so, Avea couldn’t make necessary investments for a long time either. That means, both companies, were not making investment for last 4-5 years.
This is why Vodafone and Avea were showing in Turkish TV Channels with covarage area advertisements, in the first half of the year. To persuade the consumers, that they became same service quality level with Turkcell.
Although, Vodafone and Avea, entered the 2007 with big tariff and advertisement campaigns, additioanlly making investments to solve the infrastructural problems, in the end of the half year, Turkcell, showed a blasting revenue and profit increase with approximately 34 million customer in Turkey.
For the details of 3G licence, you can click the 3G file (Turkish). We will publish an article for the Turkish GSM sector analyse in 2 weeks. But you can send questions to [email protected].
Kaynak : 