Statement by Türk Telekom CEO on “National Roaming”

Aside from the common infrastructure project that has been demanded from internet providers for years, even a much smaller project that serves the public interest has not entered our lives yet. Three major GSM operatorscould not activate one of the most critical systems even after the twin earthquakes in Kahramanmaraş.

Base stations surviving after the earthquake will enable it to be used regardless of the operator A new statement came from the CEO of Türk Telekom today about this opportunity and more. CEO Ümit Önal stated that they “learned a lesson” and made their mistakes on homework.

What is national circulation?

Unfortunately we usually see it on the roofs of buildings. base stationsare sewn by the operators with their own investments. These stations are only open to the customers of that operator. In other words, if you are subscribed to operator A, you cannot use the base station of operator B.

National roaming, on the other hand, is the opening of all operator base stations for common use, just like bank ATMs, in case of emergency. In this way Regardless of whether you are a Turkcell, Vodafone or Türk Telekom subscriberYou can communicate by accessing your nearest base station.

In this way, in cases where most of the base stations become unusable, as in the Kahramanmaraş earthquakes, via base stations all citizens are able to continue to communicate.

“We got the notes, we will start a pilot project”

Making an evaluation at the meeting where Türk Telekom announced its financial and operational results for 2022, Önal said, “We are prepared for a possible Istanbul earthquake. met with sector representatives at the ministerial level.announced that they are taking action to take quick action.

Önal stated that there are situations that can be resolved during the disaster process, including national circulation, that they have taken notes on this issue and that pilot project will be launched also expressed. Önal also said that the earthquake process taught all operators very different lessons and emphasized that “We will bandage the wounds together”.

According to Habertürk, the national roaming, which we cannot use even in the face of such pain, cannot be realized because of Turkcell:

Habertürk columnist Güntay Şimşek claimed that Turkcell was the first to oppose the national roaming that he published recently. Şimşek reminded that Turkcell is the operator with the highest number of base stations in our country. Turkcell is the biggest obstacle suggested.

Turkcell has transferred its base stations to a different company:

“Turkcell established Kule A.Ş. by collecting base stations about a month ago and it does not have a permit from the Ministry of Transport and Information Technologies and Communications Board (BTK). In the same way, Türk Telekom and Vodafone applied, and they were not allowed. By establishing Kule A.Ş., Turkcell transferred some of the turnover of the publicly traded company to another company established independently there.”

We continue to “learn” from the pain…