Ministry allows higher call completion fee

Çilem Kaya ISTANBUL / Hürriyet

Domestic mobile operators pay an average of 7 euro cent per minute as a call completion fee. Hürriyet photo

Turkey’s Transport, Maritime and Telecommunication Ministry has hiked the call completion fee for foreign operators in calls from Turkey in a bid to balance the gap with local operators.

Domestic mobile phone operators pay an average of 7 euro cent per minute for every call their subscribers completed in a foreign country. The fee is paid to the agreement operators active in that foreign country, whereas the figure was 1.5 euro cent per minute in Turkey. The disparity in call completion fees cost Turkey some 1.1 billion Turkish Liras of deficit.

The ministry and the Information and Communication Technologies Authority responded positively to joint calls from domestic mobile phone operators, which submitted a report to the ministry to increase the fee.

Accordingly, the ministry has authorized the domestic mobile operators to increase call completion fee up to 7 euro cent per minute.

Foreign operators used to pay 3.13 kurus per minute to Turkcell, 3.23 kurus per minute to Vodafone and 3.70 kurus per minute to Avea for international calls by their subscribers completed in Turkey.