The Information and Communication Technologies Authority ("ICTA") published Mobile Call Termination Market Analysis1 ("Analysis") within the scope of Electronic Communications Law No. 5809 and Market Analysis Regulation, on September 8, 2020 for public opinion. Previous market analysis on mobile call termination services has been made in 2017.
The Analysis provides evaluations on significant market power and market actors, and mainly provides evaluations on (i) mobile call termination service definition, (ii) market definitions, (iii) regulation requirements in the market, (iv) competition level in the market, (iv) operators having significant market power in the market, and (v) obligations imposed to the operators having significant market.
Accordingly,
i. Analysis states that mobile call termination services cover the services initiated and terminated on mobile networks, and services initiated on fixed networks and terminated on mobile networks.
ii. Analysis defines the market mobile call termination services in a manner covering mobile call termination, voice/visual call termination and SMS/MMS termination, including 2G, 3G and 4.5G technologies and geographical region as Turkey.
iii. Analysis refers to European Commission decisions with numbers 2007/879/EC and 2014/710/EU, and states that the markets must be regulated in the light of these decisions.
iv. Analysis evaluates the competition level, and determines the competition level as low.
Consequently, ICTA determined that:
i. TT Mobil Iletisim Hizmetleri A.S. ("TT"), Turkcell Iletisim Hizmetleri A.S. ("Turkcell"), Vodafone Telekomünikasyon A.S. ("Vodafone"), Küresel Mobil Uydu Haberlesme Sistemi (Global Mobile Personal Communications by Satellite, GMPCS) ("GMPCS") and Sanal Mobil Sebeke Hizmeti (Virtual Mobile Network) ("VMN") operators are the operators who have significant market power in the mobile call termination market.
ii. TT, Turkcell and Vodafone must be subject to the following obligations: interconnection obligation, non-discrimination obligation, transparency obligation, obligation to draft and publish reference interconnection proposals, tariff control obligation, account separation and cost accounting obligation and co-location obligation.
iii. GMPCS and VMN must be subject to the following obligations: interconnection obligation, non-discrimination obligation and transparency obligation.
iv. SMS and MMS termination services must continue to be regulated by ICTA.
This article was first published in Legal Insights Quarterly by ELIG Gürkaynak Attorneys-at-Law in December 2020. A link to the full Legal Insight Quarterly may be found here
Footnotes
1 See https://www.btk.gov.tr/uploads/boarddecisions/kamuoyu-gorus-alinmasi-mobil-cagri-sonlandirma-pazari/258-2020-web.pdf (Last accessed on November 17, 2020)
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