Türkiye's fourth mobile phone operator has started receiving subscriptions, the chairperson of the firm Netgsm told Anadolu Agency (AA) on Friday.
Providing information about the service, Adem Öcal, chairperson of the board of directors of Netgsm, said the operator would serve with a "0510 22X XXXX" number extension.
Öcal told AA that Netgsm offers fixed and virtual phone services and is an internet provider. It obtained its communication infrastructure license from the Information Technologies and Communications Authority (BTK) in 2009.
He said that they established GSM core network infrastructures under virtual mobile network services for the first time in mobile phone services, obtained the 0510 22X XXXX number extension from the BTK, and started providing services as a test last year.
In addition, he informed that they have risen to fourth place behind a privileged group of companies with nearly 200,000 VoIP/SMS/internet subscribers within the scope of fixed telephone services.
He emphasized that the company prioritizes the development of its software and hardware with research and development (R&D) projects supported by the Scientific and Technological Research Council of Türkiye (TÜBITAK), adding that the firm has a talented workforce, in addition to its own data center and established infrastructure.
Öcal expressed that the need for mobility necessitates sharing the base station with mobile operators, but the rest of the infrastructure must be owned by the operator and said, "A virtual mobile network service is a mobile operator that shares base stations emitting frequencies allocated for GSM, by paying rent with other mobile operators and operationally there is no difference between them."
He also said that they obtained approvals for necessary applications submitted to the BTK and that subscriptions could be done through an e-government application or artificial intelligence verification mobile application.
"We started taking subscriptions as of this month," he said.
Thus, Öcal stated that they would be serving as the fourth operator in the country, along with Türk Telekom's mobile service TT Mobil, Turkcell and Vodafone Türkiye and noted that the numbers of other GSM operators can also be transferred to Netgsm.
"We aim to reach 3 million subscribers with number porting by the end of this year," he concluded.
