# Speedtest® Market Report

### Turkey

#### Published December 21, 2016

The data from Q2-Q3 2016 is in, and Turkey’s internet speed has the mixed results you might expect from an emerging economy. Though providers have been investing in infrastructure for both fixed broadband and mobile, average mobile download speed is more than twice as fast as the 14.51 Mbps fixed broadband average at 31.01 Mbps. In fact, average fixed broadband speeds decreased 10.8% since Q2-Q3 2015 and the country ranks 81st in the world for average broadband download speed. On the other hand, mobile speeds increased a staggering 206.1% in the past twelve months and the country ranks 16th for mobile download speed, outpacing countries like Sweden and the United States.

As part of the government’s 2023 Vision, Turkey aims to be one of the ten largest economies in the world by 2023. Although 40 million people in Turkey use the internet daily, broadband and mobile penetration are among the lowest in the OECD at 12.27% and 50.44%, respectively. Despite these low adoption rates, Turkish ISPs and mobile carriers are investing in the kind of infrastructure a modern, digital country needs. Turkey has invested heavily in fiber and those investments in infrastructure are paying off in growth of overall fiber subscriptions. And Turkey is on track with, if not ahead of, more developed economies in terms of mobile infrastructure investment. All three of Turkey’s top mobile providers successfully transitioned from 3G to LTE-Advanced (4.5G) by April 1, 2016. Coupled with the fact that Turkey is a young country, the median age is 30.5, these investments in infrastructure are a good bet for Turkey’s future.

Unfortunately, access to certain sites on the internet has been restricted at times in Turkey, something that does not happen as often in the western world. In response to an attempted coup in July, the Turkish government has placed restrictions on internet access in the country. ISPs have been instructed to throttle or block Twitter, Facebook, Whatsapp, Youtube and Tor on several occasions. Turkey has since amended its digital communications law to enforce large bans and quicker compliance from providers. These restrictions could inhibit outside investment in Turkey’s growing economy.

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### Turkey Fixed Broadband Speeds

### Report Stats

#### TEST COUNT:

4,211,793

#### 1-YEAR CHANGE (DOWNLOAD):

-10 %

#### 1-YEAR CHANGE (UPLOAD):

-14 %

According to Speedtest data, the average fixed broadband speeds in Turkey for Q2-Q3 2016 are 14.51 Mbps for download and 4.04 Mbps for upload. This is a 10.8% decline from 16.27 Mbps for download speed and a 14.9% decline from 4.75 Mbps for upload speed. Turkey ranks 81st globally for average download speed, just behind Sri Lanka and ahead of Cyprus. For average upload speed, Turkey ranks 110th globally, after Pakistan.

Among OECD countries, Turkey ranks 11th for total fixed broadband subscriptions, following countries like the United States, Japan, Mexico and Canada, and 34th for broadband penetration. As of Q4 2015, Turkey had 12.27 subscriptions per 100 inhabitants. This is the lowest broadband penetration among all OECD countries, except Mexico (12.05 subscriptions per 100 inhabitants). Though Turkey benefits from healthy competition between a large number of ISPs, it’s worth noting that the average household size in Turkey is significantly larger (3.6 persons per household) than that in all other OECD countries except for Mexico. The next nearest country is Israel at 3.1 inhabitants per household. This could explain the lower penetration rate in Turkey, as one subscription covers more people than it would in a country with smaller households.

The largest ISPs in Turkey are Turk Telekom (partially owned by the state, with 71.8% of subscribers as of the end of Q4 2015), Turkcell Superonline (17.6%), D-Smart (3.9%), Vodafone (3.1%), and TurkNet (2.0%).

Turkey relies primarily on DSL with 9.2 subscriptions per 100 inhabitants, and more than twice as many fixed broadband subscriptions are delivered over fiber (2.2 per 100 people) than over cable (0.8 per 100). Turkey’s investments in extending fiber optic networks are evident as the number of fiber subscriptions grew almost 15% between 2014 and 2015. As of Q4 2015, 17.6% of Turkey’s broadband was delivered over fiber. This is a higher percentage than many advanced countries including Luxembourg, the Netherlands, the United States, Australia and Canada.

In July 2016, Turkish ISPs Turkcell Superonline, Vodafone, Turksat Kablo and the Telecommunication Operators Association announced a joint venture to improve Turkey’s fixed broadband network. Though Türk Telekom has been expanding its fiber networks, laying 132,000 miles of fiber as of March 2016 and is expected to invest another $3.5 billion (₺12.1 billion) in the next three years, the company has resisted calls to share infrastructure.

This joint venture can be seen as a counter to Türk Telekom’s infrastructure dominance and the fact that Türk Telekom sets the rates at which to charge competitors for using its infrastructure. Together members of the joint venture make up 55% of the Turkish telecom market and together would work to invest in improvements to Turkey’s internet infrastructure. Fiber installation is indeed very costly, which is why many countries attempt to delay or avoid the switch to fiber. This joint venture would avoid duplicating efforts and reportedly save members US$12.6 billion (₺43.7 billion). Turkcell CEO, Kaan Terzioğlu, said that the group’s objective is to make fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) available to 21 million more homes. The largest ISP in the joint venture, Turkcell, alone had the infrastructure to make fiber available to 2.5 million homes as of July 2016. Although the transportation minister has made positive statements toward fiber itself, it is unclear if the government will push Türk Telekom to give access to competitors.

### Turkey Fastest ISPs

### Download

#### FASTEST: Turkcell Superonline & Turksat Kablo

With a mere 0.04 Mbps dividing them, Turkcell Superonline and Turksat Kablo are tied for the fastest ISP in Turkey for downloads. Turkcell Superonline, a subsidiary of Turkcell, offers customers services through a unified fixed and mobile network platform. Turksat Kablo, a division of the state-owned communications satellite operator Turksat Company, offers internet over a cable network.

### Upload

#### FASTEST: Turkcell Superonline

Turkcell Superonline offers ADSL up to 16 Mbps and VDSL up to 100 Mbps. The telecom’s main attraction, fiber, starts at a speed of 25 Mbps. Turkcell Superonline is the first operator to provide speeds of up to 1000 Mbps (1 Gbps) to Turkish homes.

Speedtest data on top 10% download performance for fixed broadband shows Turkcell Superonline and Turksat Kablo nearly tied in Q2-Q3 2016 as the fastest provider for downloads at 48.01 Mbps and 47.97 Mbps, respectively. For Turkcell Superonline, that represents a 1.3% decrease from the same period last year. Meanwhile, Turksat Kablo is trending in the right direction with a 5.2% increase from Q2-Q3 2015.

Turkcell Superonline clearly wins the fastest upload speed category with 8.40 Mbps in Q2-Q3 2016. Though a slower-than-normal speed for top 10% performance, this represents a solid 15.2% increase from the same period last year, and Turkcell is nearly twice as fast for uploads as second place Vodafone’s 4.69 Mbps. Interestingly, Vodafone’s upload speed for Q2-Q3 2015 was 10.85 Mbps, faster than any ISP then or now.

Despite having the fastest download and upload speeds in the nation, Turkcell Superonline faces tough competition from other providers in Turkey’s five largest cities. Turkcell Superonline retains dominance in Adana, Turkey’s fifth largest city, but Vodafone and Turksat Kablo split title of fastest ISP evenly between them in the four largest cities in Turkey. In Ankara, the capital of Turkey, Turksat Kablo offers the fastest download speed at 48.51 Mbps. Turksat Kablo is also the fastest provider for downloads in Bursa with a speed of 43.79 Mbps. Meanwhile, Vodafone provides the fastest download speed in Istanbul and Izmir 77.08 and 55.10, respectively. Also noteworthy is Vodafone’s upload speed in Istanbul—an impressive 58.23 Mbps.

#### HOW SPEEDTEST MEASURES FIXED BROADBAND

ISPs offering fixed broadband services are ranked based on top speed performance, which is determined using the 90th percentile of the download and upload speeds, or Top 10%, of each ISP’s Speedtest results. While many ISPs offer various service tiers, our aim is to determine who is fastest by showing the performance achieved by each residential ISP’s top tier. These speeds represent customers who subscribe to faster service tiers and provide an accurate view of the top-end performance of a given ISP. It is important to note that customers subscribing to higher tiers will generally pay more for their service than the average subscriber. For purposes of this report, only Top Providers in a given location were included in the analysis. Each ISP that accounts for at least 3% of the total sample size in the geographic area are included as a Top Provider. When analyzing Turkey overall, we use the average speed, as it represents the experience of a typical consumer in Turkey. When comparing ISPs individually, we use top speed performance, as it represents the performance a consumer could reasonably expect to receive if they subscribe to one of the ISP’s higher tiers of service.

### Turkey Mobile Speeds

### Report Stats

#### TEST COUNT:

3,220,691

#### 1-YEAR CHANGE (DOWNLOAD):

206 %

#### 1-YEAR CHANGE (UPLOAD):

580 %

Unlike fixed broadband, average mobile download speed on modern devices in Turkey increased 206.1% to a respectable 31.01 Mbps in Q2-Q3 2016 from 10.13 Mbps in Q2-Q3 2015. The country’s average mobile download speed ranks 16th in the world and 10th in Europe. Turkey follows countries such as Hungary, Norway and Moldova, but leads countries such as Belgium, Switzerland and Sweden. The biggest increase in speed was between February and April of 2016 when the major carriers rolled out 4.5G.

The average upload speed of 13.40 Mbps in Q2-Q3 2016 represents an astounding 580.2% increase over the Q2-Q3 2015 average of 1.97 Mbps. Though Turkey’s 9th place ranking in the world for average mobile upload speed, just behind Luxembourg and ahead of Australia, is impressive, the rapid rate of improvement to that speed is even more impressive. It’s also worth noting that Turkey’s mobile upload speed is 233.3% faster than the country’s average broadband upload speed.

Speeds for modern device downloads were slightly faster in major cities such as Istanbul, Ankara, Bursa and Adana than the country as a whole. The city with the fastest average mobile downloads in Turkey was Adana at 34.94 Mbps. The speed in Ankara, the capital of Turkey, was 31.90 Mbps. The slowest major city was Izmir with an average download speed of 29.96 Mbps, which falls just below the national average.

Compared to the country’s unimpressive fixed broadband rankings, Turkey’s mobile speeds are high. In most modern countries, there is typically a pronounced gap between fixed broadband and mobile speeds with broadband coming in the lead. However, in Turkey average mobile speeds trump average fixed broadband speeds and are in fact closer to top 10% speeds for fixed broadband.

This is likely because of the previously mentioned commitment by Turkcell, Vodafone and Türk Telekom to launch 4.5G by April 1, 2016. Over twenty thousand 4.5G base stations have been deployed. On March 22, 2016, Turkcell achieved speeds of up to 390 Mbps during tests at a press conference staged in five cities simultaneously. Meanwhile, Vodafone allowed subscribers to trial 4.5G throughout the month of April 2016. In February 2016, Vodafone used quadrature amplitude modulation (256-QAM) to combine frequencies across four bands to successfully reach a speed of 942 Mbps during trials. In addition, Türk Telekom is offering a new type of mobile connection that uses both LTE and Wi-Fi at the same time (LTE-het or Giga LTE) where LTE connections can get a fixed broadband assist. The theory is that these connections can achieve a download speed of 1.17 Gbps, which is 15 times faster than existing LTE. In order to take advantage of LTE-het, consumers must have compatible smartphones. We have not yet seen a significant enough number of tests in Speedtest data to suggest LTE-het is being used by a large portion of Turkey’s population.

Though Turkey’s mobile market is large, the penetration is low. The country ranks 9th for total mobile subscriptions among OECD countries, following behind the likes of the United States, Japan, Germany and Italy, but there were only 50.44 mobile subscriptions per 100 inhabitants by the end of Q4 2015. This is lower than all other OECD countries except for Hungary (40.10), Greece (46.77) and Israel (50.14). This gap between Turkey’s comparatively large population of 75.9 million and their low mobile subscription rates leaves a lot of room for market growth.

The Turkish population is very young. Half of its citizens are under the age of 31. By contrast, the median age in the United States is 37.9. Those demographics are leading to higher demand for streaming and games. Turkish providers are keen to this trend and are taking steps to meet market demand. For instance, Vodafone began an agreement with Netflix in October 2016 that designed to give their customers increased access to the streaming service. Netflix in Turkey now offers a fully localized interface and monthly subscriptions including localized content starting at $4.54 (₺15.99; users of Vodafone Red get three months of Netflix for free. Vodafone has a strong presence in Turkey and the partnership is expected to help Netflix with quick integration.

Turkcell is the largest mobile operator with a market share of 38.4% as of Q4 2016. Vodafone is second at 28.5% and Türk Telekom (previously Avea) comes in third at 22.0%. Conflict among mobile providers arose in March 2016 when the country moved to upgrade its 3G networks. This conflict was due to the previously discussed desire of providers to have cheaper access to Türk Telekom’s fiber optic network so as to keep their prices competitive. All three of Turkey’s largest mobile carriers are also ISPs and compete to provide bundled mobile and fixed broadband services to customers. The Turkish Transportation Minister called for providers to start working together and in July 2016, several did band together in the joint venture discussed under the broadband section.

### Turkey Fastest Mobile

### Download

#### FASTEST: Turkcell

Turkcell is the fastest mobile provider for mobile downloads in Turkey’s five largest cities and in the country as a whole. The company has been in business since 1994 when it offered the first GSM network in Turkey. Turkcell also uses HSPA (High Speed Packet Access) technology, which improves the performance of existing 3G networks.

### Upload

#### FASTEST: Turkcell

Also the fastest mobile carrier for uploads, Turkcell offers multiple 4.5G packages with speeds anywhere from 2 GB to 20 GB at prices from $84.03 (₺291.60) to $137.27 (₺476.22). In September 2016, Turkcell released an app to help Syrian refugees in Turkey learn Turkish phrases and connect to basic services. Turkcell provides mobile service to 1.2 million refugees from the Syrian civil war.

The fastest mobile provider in Turkey is Turkcell with a national average of 38.80 Mbps for download and 16.26 Mbps for upload in Q2-Q3 2016. Those speeds represent a 242.2% and 764.9% increase over Q2-Q3 2015, respectively. Turkcell is incredibly dominant in top speeds for both downloads and uploads. The company is already looking to the future by supporting research and development for 5G in cooperation with partners Huawei, Aselsan and Ericsson.

In Q2-Q3 2016, Turkcell led download speed in all five of Turkey’s largest cities: Adana, Ankara, Bursa, Istanbul and Izmir. Turkcell’s average download speed was fastest in Bursa with an average of 41.46 Mbps. Turkcell’s fastest uploads were in Ankara at a speed of 18.09 Mbps.

Though the 1.17 Gbps download speed theoretically possible under LTE-het could skew Türk Telekom’s speeds faster over time, we at Speedtest haven’t yet seen a statistically significant number of tests come through over LTE-het. This is evident as Türk Telekom shows slower average speeds despite having deployed this technology.

#### HOW SPEEDTEST MEASURES MOBILE CARRIERS

The top mobile carriers in Turkey are ranked using the average download speed of “Modern Devices” - those devices that are capable of connecting to the fastest, broadly-available wireless networks. In Turkey, this means devices capable of 4G LTE. This ensures we provide an accurate view of the typical performance a user can achieve using a modern smartphone or tablet on a given mobile network. Top carriers are those that each account for at least 3% of the sample size in the geographic area. When analyzing the country as a whole, we use the mean value of all cellular results to account for the typical user. However, when analyzing individual carriers, we look at “Modern Devices” to account for top speeds available in TURKEY.

## City Leaders

## Market Summary

Growth in infrastructure is the name of the game in Turkey’s internet sector. ISPs and mobile carriers, often the same companies, are investing in high-end technologies like fiber, 4.5G and even in newly emerging options like LTE-het to drive improvements in internet speeds and customer experience overall. This strategy is working well for mobile, but fixed broadband has seen a decline in overall speeds. Collaborative efforts by leading companies are aimed at improving internet speeds and saving money, but Turk Telekom is independently pursuing its own expansion plan.

It remains to be seen if a young population and a growing economy will result in improvements to Turkey’s lackluster broadband and mobile penetration rates. Whether a mobile, or a mobile-broadband hybrid, will replace fixed broadband entirely is also up in the air. Another unanswered question is how the current political climate will affect external investment in Turkey as a whole and in telecoms more specifically.

Regardless of the outcomes, the telecom market in Turkey is a fascinating case study in the volatility of growth in an emerging market.

Written with contributions by Sera Tajima.

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