Turk Telekom: Rural Transformation Project completed

Alcatel-Lucent has announced that it has completed Turk Telekom’s ‘Rural Transformation Project’, which is aimed at helping the incumbent bridge the digital divide within the country, introducing a wide range of new services such as N7 signalling, CLIP/CLIR, detailed billing, SMS on PSTN, ISDN BRA/PRA, pre-paid calling, Centrex, IN services, and BB services, to consumers in underserved areas. The EUR62.3 million (USD91.64 million) project, which was initiated in March 2007, consisted of replacing 2.9 million lines and 9,750 nodes with next generation network (NGN)-based multiservice access nodes (MSANs). Mehmet Atalay, Turk Telekom director of networks, said: ‘The completion of the Rural Transformation Project is an important achievement for our company, and for Turkey as a whole. It allows us to extend internet utilisation all over the country, significantly expanding the Turkish broadband market. Together with Alcatel-Lucent, we have built a reliable and scalable network infrastructure that supports the delivery of new applications, helping us thrive durably.’