Turkcell reports 14% annual subs growth
Turkey’s largest mobile operator Turkcell has reported a 14% growth in subscriber numbers in 2006, ending the year with 31.8 million domestic customers. 5.8 million of these are post-paid subscribers, although the recent trend has been towards pre-paid tariffs, with 90% of new users signed up in the fourth quarter opting for pay-as-you-go packages. The annual churn rate for 2006 stood at 14.7%, up from 10.1% a year before; the company attributed this to the high overall growth and the intensified competition in the Turkish wireless market. Turkcell says it had invested a total of USD6.1 billion in its domestic mobile operations, excluding licence fees, by the end of September.