Turkey's Transportation Minister Feridun Bilgin said on Thursday that the shift from 3G to 4.5G would be free-of-charge for consumers and that the new technology would increase mobile Internet speed by tenfold. The so-called 4.5G technology allows mobile Internet speed to increase beyond the capacity of 4G and will ease the eventual move to 5G. He said the 4.5G tender held by the Information Technologies and Communications Authority (BTK) on Aug. 26 had collected 3.96 billion euros, describing the high figure as a sign of trust for the Turkish economy. Turkcell, Vodafone and Avea, which won the tender, will pay the entire amount by April, 2017, he said.