On 4 March 2015 the Turkish Minister of Transport, Maritime Affairs and Communications, Lütfi Elvan, announced that the 4G auction will be completed in May 2015 and 4G will be put into service at the end of the year. Lütfi Elvan has also informed that a new operator will take part in the auction besides the incumbent operators (Vodafone Turkey, Turcell, Avea). The said announcement was awaited with a great deal of excitement, since Turkey is trying to introduce 4G for a while.
Minister Elvan explained that a total of 390 Mhz from 800, 900, 1800, 2100 and 2600 MHz bands, will be presented in the auction. In addition to that, he concluded that the new operator will solely operate over the 2600 Mhz spectrum and it will not be subjected to the obligations imposed over the incumbents." He also emphasized the importance of active spectrum sharing in low density areas and clarified that the current asymmetry in the distribution of frequency spectrums will be removed during the 4G auctions.
The introduction of 4G services will definitely transform the competition in the industry. With their initial comments, incumbent mobile operators have expressed their excitement about the coming process. Earlier explanations of the incumbent mobile operators' CEOs confirmed that they had already started to work on 4G technologies. For instance, Vodafone Turkey announced that it had reached very high speeds in its own 4G tests. Turkcell also began launching speed tests for 4G through a limited long-term evolution (LTE) network in Istanbul in 2012.
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