Vodafone eyes G3 expansion

Bloomberg

Vodafone is "determined" to grow in Turkey’s mobile phone market, which grew to $31 billion last year, Colao said in an e-mailed statement during a visit to Istanbul. Vodafone will introduce 3G services in three months time, he said.

The company has doubled the number of base stations and improved call quality in the past two years, he said.

"We will set up our 3G technologies on top of this new infrastructure," Colao said. Vodafone paid the Turkish government $395 million for a 3G license.

Vodafone bought Turkey’s second-biggest mobile-phone operator Telsim from the government for $4.55 billion in 2006 and is seeking to snatch market share from leader Turkcell and stave off competition from Avea, the third-biggest operator owned by Türk Telekom.