Musk’s Starlink seeks to offer service in Türkiye

ISTANBUL

Elon Musk’s Starlink, SpaceX’s satellite internet company, is seeking to offer service in Türkiye, according to an official from the Transport Ministry.

“Starlink, which provides low orbit satellite service, had conveyed their request that they wanted to operate in our country,” said Ömer Fatih Sayan, Deputy Transport and Infrastructure Minister on X, former Twitter.

They held “a productive meeting” with SpaceX officials at the Information Technologies and Communications Authority [BTK] on Sept. 20, he said.

“As a result of the meeting; On Sept. 25, we will receive the opinions of our communications industry and the public, especially our stakeholders regarding satellite services.”

Earlier this week President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan met with Musk in New York.

Erdoğan told Musk that Türkiye is open to cooperation on Starlink and artificial intelligence.

In response, Musk expressed their wish to work with Turkish authorities to obtain the necessary license to offer Starlink satellite services in Türkiye.

Erdoğan also called on the tech tycoon to establish his next Tesla factory in Türkiye.

Starlink presently has more than 5,000 small satellites in low Earth orbit.

There were 91.6 million broadband internet subscribers in Türkiye as of the end of March, according to the quarterly report by the BTK.

The number of broadband users has increased steadily over the years, rising from only 6 million in 2008 to surpass 80 million in 2020. At the end of 2020, there were 90.6 million broadband subscribers in the country.

TTNet was the largest player in the market with a 56.6 percent share in terms the number of subscribers, followed by Superonline at 14.8 percent and Vodafone Net at 7.3 percent as of March.

The shares of Turksat and Turknet were 6.5 percent and 4.6 percent, respectively.