ANKARA - Turkey's top mobile phone operator Turkcell on Friday won a tender for the country's first third-generation phone licence with a bid of 321 million euros (438.5 million dollars).
Turkcell was the only bidder in the televised tender held by the state regulatory body, the Telecommunications Board, for four different licences at four different frequencies that will allow operators to provide advanced servives such as video telephony.
Turkcell made an initial bid of 311 million euros which it then increased by 10 million euros to win the licence for the top frequency of 45 MHz.
With value added tax, the company will be paying the treasury some 510 million dollars, the Anatolia news agency said.
The deal is subject to approval by the Telecommunications Board.
Turkcell said in its bid that it would pay the price of the license in cash if the deal is approved by the state.
"It would take us three to six months to introduce video telephony once we get the appproval and make the necessary investments," Turkcell CEO Sureyya Ciliv said after the tender.
The tender commission cancelled the remaining three tenders for licences at lesser frequencies for lack of bidders.
Turkey's second-largest mobile phone operator Vodafone, third-largest Avea and French mobile phone operator Orange were reported to have requested tender conditions, but none submitted a bid.
Both Vodafone and Avea have opposed handing out 3G licences before the Turkish state allowed number portability, on the grounds that such a move would only benefit Turkcell.
The Telecommunications board issued a regulation earlier this year to allow subscribers to change operators without changing their numbers, but Turkcell took the regulation to court.
Turkcell, which controls about 60 percent of the Turkish market, said last month that it had posted a net profit of 274 million dollars in the second quarter of the year, increasing its consolidated revenues by 29 percent to 1.5 billion dollars.
The company said it had also increased its subscibers by 13 percent to reach 33.8 million.
09/07/2007 10:38 GMT