17.6.2017
Dr. Ömer Fatih Sayan, Chairman of the Information Technologies and Communication Authority (BTK), made evaluations regarding the "Turkey Electronic Communications Sector 3-Month Market Data Report" prepared by BTK for the first quarter of 2017.
Noting that the number of subscribers and usage in mobile broadband services in the country continued to increase in the first year of the 4.5G service that started on April 1 last year, Sayan stated, "Growth and developments are also being recorded in other areas of the sector. The '3-Month Market Data Report' published by our Authority for the first quarter of 2017 contains detailed data on the sector for that period."
Sayan made the following evaluations regarding the data emerging from a general review of the 3-Month Market Data Report:
4.5G DIFFERENCE: ALL STATISTICS HIT THE ROOF
As the 4.5G services that started on April 1, 2016, completed their first year, they were met with great interest by our citizens. As of April 1, 2017, 56.4 million citizens switched to 4.5G subscription. The number of subscribers whose devices and SIM cards are 4.5G compatible and who can actively use 4.5G service reached 22 million, with an increase of 2.8 million compared to the end of 2016. The monthly average mobile data usage, which was 1.6 GB before the 4.5G service started, rose to 2.5 GB on average for all mobile subscribers by the end of the first year, while this figure reached 5.5 GB for subscribers with 4.5G compatible devices and SIM cards.
BROADBAND INTERNET SUBSCRIBER AND USAGE AMOUNTS INCREASED
The broadband internet subscriber number increased by 2.1 million compared to the previous period, especially due to the prevalence of 4.5G and the increase in subscriber numbers, reaching 64.3 million. Of this number, 10.8 million are fixed subscribers and 53.5 million are mobile subscribers. During this period, the fiber subscriber number exceeded 2 million for the first time. When looking at the total internet subscriber number, it increased by 24.3% compared to the same period of the previous year. The highest increase was in Mobile Internet from Phones at approximately 29.2%, followed by Cable Internet at approximately 18.2%.
In the first quarter of 2017, the monthly average usage of fixed broadband internet subscribers exceeded 72.9 Gbytes, marking an 11% increase compared to the same period of the previous year. The monthly average usage of mobile broadband internet subscribers was realized at 2.5 GBytes. Compared to the previous three-month period, there was a 7.2% increase in the average usage of fixed broadband internet subscribers and a 10.3% increase in the average usage of mobile broadband internet subscribers.
TOP THREE PROVINCES WITH THE FASTEST SPEEDS: BURSA, SAMSUN, ERZURUM
In the first quarter of 2017, mobile internet access speeds were measured in 5 provinces within the scope of service quality notifications. As a result of the measurements in these five provinces, the top three provinces in mobile data download speed—Bursa, Samsun, and Erzurum—recorded speeds of 7.4 Mbps, 7.4 Mbps, and 7.1 Mbps respectively; mobile data upload speeds were measured at 1.8 Mbps, 1.5 Mbps, and 1.8 Mbps. In measurements in other provinces, mobile data download speeds were 5.7 Mbps, and mobile data upload speeds ranged between 1.5 Mbps and 1.6 Mbps.
MOBILE TRAFFIC VOLUME REACHED 59 BILLION
In the first quarter of 2017, the total mobile traffic volume was 59.92 billion minutes. For fixed traffic, this figure was approximately 2.1 billion minutes. Mobile traffic volume increased by 5.6% compared to the same period last year. The majority of the traffic, at a rate of 92.5%, consists of mobile-to-mobile traffic.
In intra-city traffic, the share of MNO operators is 15.2%, while Türk Telekom's share is 84.8%. In outbound international call traffic, Türk Telekom's share was 47.2%, and MNO operators' share was 52.8%.
In this traffic, Germany was again the country with the highest traffic sent and received from fixed and mobile lines, while the top three most called short numbers were 182 (Hospital Appointment), 112 (Medical Emergency), and 186 (Electricity Fault).
NUMBER OF PORTED NUMBERS INCREASED
In our country's mobile number portability application, which started in 2008 and is considered one of the most successful in the world, the number of ported numbers, which exceeded 100 million in the previous period, continued to increase and approached 104 million. In the first quarter, the number of ported numbers was 2.7 million. Mobile number portability increased by 18.72% compared to the previous three-month period, with 2.78 million subscriber numbers ported to another operator. From the start of fixed line number portability on September 10, 2009, to March 31, 2017, a total of 1,334,500 number portability transactions were carried out. In the first quarter of 2017, Türk Telekom lost 75,042 subscribers; Superonline gained a net of 30,257 subscribers.
HIGHEST MONTHLY REVENUE PER SUBSCRIBER AT TURKCELL
The Average Revenue Per User (ARPU) figures, showing how much revenue an operator obtains on average from a subscriber per month, are as follows: Türk Telekom 24.49 TL, Turkcell 28.1 TL, Vodafone 27.1 TL, Avea 26.5 TL.
MOBILE SUBSCRIBER NUMBER REACHED 75 MILLION
The increase in mobile subscriber numbers continued this quarter as well, reaching 75.7 million. M2M subscriber number became 4.1 million. Thus, mobile penetration approached 95%.
MOST ".com.tr" REGISTERED AMONG ".tr" DOMAIN NAMES
As of this period, there are 386,254 ".tr" domain names in "Nic.tr" records. Of these domain names, 79.9% are "com.tr", 5.3% are "gen.tr", 3.5% are "gov.tr", and 2.6% are "web.tr". The websites using these domain names are hosted 80.4% in Turkey, 8.9% in the USA, 4.5% in Germany, 2% in France, 1.5% in the Netherlands, 1.1% in the UK, and 1.7% in other countries.
FIBER INFRASTRUCTURE INVESTMENTS PROGRESSED
Progress in fiber infrastructure investments continues in the first quarter of 2017. Fiber length, which was 272,550 km in the same period of the previous year, reached 297,620 km in the first quarter of 2017, marking an increase of nearly 9.2%.
Finally, BTK Chairman Sayan wished for the growth and development in the electronic communications sector to continue throughout the rest of the year and expressed his hope that the 2017 First Quarter Market Data Report would be beneficial to the entire sector.