Turkey to receive nearly 1 billion euro from 3G licenses sale
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Turkey will receive 969 million euros from mobile operators for three 3G operating licenses after the country held its third generation system license tender on Friday. (UPDATED)
Turkey's leading mobile phone operator Turkcell submitted Friday the highest bid for the country's first ever third-generation mobile phone systems license, while Vodafone and Avea acquired the second and third 3G licenses. Turkcell submitted a bid of 358 million euro for license A, which totals 422 million euros when value-added tax is included, in the first auction held by the Information Technologies and Communication Agency (BTK).
The result of the auction commission has been approved by the BTK.
Turkcell CEO Sureyya Ciliv told reporters that the payment would be made in cash adding that they estimated to start 3G services as of next June or July, Ciliv also said.
Vodafone submitted the highest bid of 250 million euro for the B-type license, while Avea acquired the C-type license with a bid of 214 million euro, excluding value-added tax.
Current CEO of Vodafone Turkey, Ian Gray, also said their bid for the B-type license, which was nearly 600 million YTL, confirms the importance they give to Turkey. "This is very important, because it shows how much we, as an international company, are tied to Turkey," he added.
The three auctions raised a total of 969 billion euro, including value-added tax, for Turkey, while no bids were received for the fourth D-type license.
Avea CEO Cuneyt Turktan also said they were ready for 3G technology with their renewed infrastructure and that they would continue to investments gradually in the coming term.
Turkey had set minimum values for the A, B, C and D licenses at 285 million euro, 250 million, 214 million and 178 million euros, respectively.
"3G" is the third generation of mobile phone standards and technology, after "2G" that is based on the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) family of standards under the International Mobile Telecommunications program, "IMT-2000".
3G technologies enable network operators to offer users a wider range of more advanced services while achieving greater network capacity through improved spectral efficiency.
Services include wide-area wireless voice telephony and broadband wireless data, all in a mobile environment.