Avea
Encyclopedia
AveA the sole GSM 1800 mobile operator of Turkey
Turkey
Turkey , known officially as the Republic of Turkey , is a Eurasian country located in Western Asia and in East Thrace in Southeastern Europe...

, was founded in 2004 and has reached a nationwide customer base of 12.4 million by the end of June 2009.

TT&TİM İletişim Hizmetleri A.Ş. was officially established on February 19, 2004 as a consequence of the merger between Aycell, Türk Telekom
Türk Telekom
Türk Telekom is the formerly state owned Turkish telecommunications company. Türk Telekom was being separated from the Post Office in 1995. In November 2005 it was privatized to Oger Telecom....

's GSM Operator and İş-TİM which has been established through the partnership of İş Bankası
Türkiye Is Bankasi
Türkiye İş Bankası is Turkey's first public bank and premiere national financial institution, ranked 102nd in the “Top 1000 World Banks” survey of Financial Times' The Banker and 371st in the Forbes Global 2000 lists as of 2008, with a Gross Profit for the Year 2006 TRY 2,540 million and USD 6.8...

 Group with a share of 51% and TİM with a share of 49%. Following the merger, for a period Aria and Aycell brands existed under TT&TİM. A totally new brand "Avea", reflecting the synergy from the merger was introduced into the market on June 23, 2004. The business name "TT&TİM İletişim Hizmetleri A.Ş" was replaced with "Avea İletişim Hizmetleri A.Ş." as of October 15, 2004.

The privatization of 55% of Türk Telekom's shares was completed in November 2005, by Oger Telecom's acquisition 55% of Türk Telekom's shares. In September 2006, Türk Telekom acquired Telecom Italia's shares of 40.6% in Avea. Turk Telekom's share is 81.37% in Avea. The remaining 18.63% of the shares belongs to İş Bankası.

The Name "Avea"

"Avea" is a derieved name from the names of merged two operators which are "Aycell" and "Aria". That is "Avea" is a combination of first letters of names of two merged operators. "A" "ve" "A" in Turkish which means "A" "and" "A".

Coverage area

The merging of two GSM operators has resulted in the need of redesigning the network architecture to extend coverage and to solve the issues created by the network load. Avea has been able to complete most of that process about one year after its creation, and currently covers a vast majority of Turkey's land area with more than 7000 base station
Base station
The term base station can be used in the context of land surveying and wireless communications.- Land surveying :In the context of external land surveying, a base station is a GPS receiver at an accurately-known fixed location which is used to derive correction information for nearby portable GPS...

s (A map can be found on The GSM World Web Page). Offering services to 95.75% of Turkey's population through its next generation network, the company is growing fast both in the corporate and individual services with the brand "Avea" and constantly investing in technology and infrastructure as well as in its management and more than 2.500 employees. Having roaming agreements with 568 operators in 193 countries, the company continues to expand its roaming partnerships.

Being a merger of two networks, Avea suffers from the heterogeneity of roaming partners and customers with numbers beginning with 50 and 55 don't have the same list of roaming partners (see the list of roaming partners for 505 customers and the list of roaming partners for 555 customers for the different partners' lists). Avea also offers GPRS / EDGE / 3G roaming in multiple countries (see the list of GPRS roaming partners for 505 customers and the list of GPRS roaming partners for 555 customers).

Competitiveness

As the latest participant in the Turkish GSM sector, Aria, Aycell and Avea have been obliged to offer lower prices to attract a maximum number of customers. Consequently, Turkcell
Turkcell
Turkcell is the leading mobile phone operator of Turkey, based in Istanbul. The company has 34.1 million subscribers as of June 30th, 2011.- Company background :...

 (the leader of the Turkish GSM market) has lowered down its intra-network call rates by a third after the creation of Aria
Aria
An aria in music was originally any expressive melody, usually, but not always, performed by a singer. The term is now used almost exclusively to describe a self-contained piece for one voice usually with orchestral accompaniment...

, and halved all call rates when Avea has been launched.

Currently, customers pay between 0 and 0.35 Turkish Lira
Turkish lira
The Turkish lira is the currency of Turkey and the de facto independent state of the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus. The lira is subdivided into 100 kuruş...

s per minute for national calls and between 0.32 and 2.1 Turkish Liras per minute for international calls (for details, see The Avea Tariffs Web site); which roughly corresponds to respectively 0, 0.20, 0.19 and 1.1 euro
Euro
The euro is the official currency of the eurozone: 17 of the 27 member states of the European Union. It is also the currency used by the Institutions of the European Union. The eurozone consists of Austria, Belgium, Cyprus, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg,...

s per minute. The very common SMS
Short message service
Short Message Service is a text messaging service component of phone, web, or mobile communication systems, using standardized communications protocols that allow the exchange of short text messages between fixed line or mobile phone devices...

service costs between 0 and 0.06 Turkish Liras per SMS for national SMS messages, and 0.21 Turkish Liras for international ones (which corresponds to 0, 0.03 and 0.12 euros) (you can see the Avea Service Tariffs Web Site for details).
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