Number of mobile subscribers reaches 80 million in Turkey

ANKARA

The number of mobile subscribers in Turkey increased to 80.12 million last year from 77.8 million in 2017, Transport and Infrastructure Minister Cahit Turhan has said.

The mobile subscriber penetration rate also reached 99 percent, Turhan told state-run Anadolu Agency.

According to the minister, monthly talk time averaged 444 minutes per subscriber in Turkey, which is ranked as the first in the EU.

The mobile voice traffic showed a 4.2 percent to reach 267.6 billion minutes, while fixed line voice traffic declined by a sharp 11.8 percent to 6.7 billion minutes, said a report by the Information and Communication Technologies Authority (BTK) released yesterday.

Turkcell, the largest mobile operator, had a total of 33.76 million subscribers as of end-2018, slightly lower than the 34.1 million users a year ago.

Vodafone also saw a slight decline in the number of subscribers. Some 24.84 million people used the mobile carrier last year versus 24.22 million subscribers in 2017.

TT Mobil, the local telecom giant Turk Telekom’s mobile unit, managed to increase the number of subscribers to 21.52 million at the end of 2018 from 19.59 million a year ago.

Enterprises’ investments totaled 9.4 billion liras ($1.78 billion) in the electronic communication sector last year, Turhan also said.

The BTK data showed that Turkcell was the largest investor with 2.4 billion liras last year, higher than 2.07 billion the operator invested in 2017.

Vodafone’s investments amounted to 1.1 billion liras in 2018 compared to 984 million liras a year ago.

TT Mobil’s investment spending increased to 1.3 billion liras last year from 987 million in 2017.

The sector’s net sales reached 58 billion liras ($11 billion) in 2018, up by 15.4 percent compared with the previous year, according to the minister.

GSM companies’ incomes were 45 billion Turkish Liras in 2018, increasing 14.1 percent versus 2018, Turhan added.

Turkcell increased its revenues to 14.2 billion from 12.2 billion liras, while the revenues of Vodafone rose from 11 billion in 2017 to 12.9 billion liras. TT Mobil’s revenues stood at 7.6 billion at the end of 2018 versus 6.6 billion in 2017.

There were 1.25 million cable TV subscribers in Turkey as of end-2018, while the corresponding figure was 1.21 million a year ago, according to the BTK report.

It also said the number of IPTV subscribers increased to 1.33 million last year from 1.1 million in 2017.

“The number of our broadband subscribers rose 8.2 percent to reach 74.5 million as of the end of 2018,” the minister added.