Turkcell's Evolution as a Digital Experience Provider

-- An increasing number of telecom operators are focusing on providing digital services to shape the second growth curve during their digital transformation. Turkcell has been investing in digitalization for more than 10 years, with remarkable achievements in promoting digital services around the world.

Digital transformation has been a big trend in Turkey. All companies, ranging from very small businesses to very large enterprises, have the ambitions to transform their businesses by utilizing the latest digital technologies. Turkcell is an integrated communication and technology services player in the region, operating a converged mobile and fixed network platform and offering a wide range of innovative products and services. We are in the midst of a digital revolution, shifting from the traditional models to one that delivers a diverse portfolio of services combining modern technologies and solutions to deliver superior customer experiences.

Turkcell Cloud Transformation

Cloud lies in the center of the digital transformation process as it helps the businesses attain efficiency and improve productivity. Thus, Turkcell views cloud as the biggest new opportunity, the same way connectivity has been over the past 30 years. Now it's time for us to venture into new areas with the cloud, which will add additional benefits and more business value to our customers. We are on a journey to evolve ourselves from a traditional telecom operator to an infrastructure player and also an experience provider.

Ceyhun Özata, CSO, Turkcell

Turkcell has been pursuing the digital transformation journey for the past 10 years. We have made huge investments in infrastructure and technologies that give us a competitive edge in the market. We also leverage our expertise and knowledge in emerging technologies to create a cloud ecosystem that can deliver more value to our customers. We serve customers across all industries and sectors. Over the course of 30 years, Turkcell has developed certain capabilities and expertise in the technology area, not only for the telecommunications sector but also for the IT sector. Three years ago, we established a new system integration company, Digital Business Services. This has added a new dimension to our cloud transformation journey. We are trying to create new products and services on top of our connectivity and also on top of our IT services, not just with our core technology services, but also with the help of our partners. With a focus on both local and international markets, we have developed that ecosystem as a one-stop shop to end users.

However, the cloud journey is also accompanied by several challenges. We need to build expertise around the new technologies and emerging applications; only then can we deliver value to our customers. We need to have a thorough understanding of the market requirement, and we should be able to comprehend the real issues and then apply the best and the most beneficial solution to them. Thus, we need a talented workforce who can drive our digital journey to deliver value to our customers. The challenge is to create value for the end users, and this is the challenge for us and also for operators and technology providers all over the world.

Turkcell Global Strategy

Turkcell is developing services for both consumer and enterprise segments, with services ranging from instant messaging to music and from TV to digital publishing and personal cloud systems. In fact, we are growing with our customers, and wherever they are on the Internet, we follow them and apply our solutions to enhance their digital experience.

Ataç Tansuğ, CDSO, Turkcell

We have created a BiP suite consisting of an email system, video conferencing solution, document sharing & management and a storage platform. It serves the purpose of office management, like popular software applications including Office 365. BiP is also used by user communities to digitize internal communications and also to share information, documents, and training content with employees or group members. The BiP app is available globally, so anyone interested in this app can download and use it forever. We also have plans to collaborate with operators in international markets to further expand the reach of our solutions. We have engaged in agreements with operators outside Turkey to boost marketing activities in their territories. This will help expand Turkcell's digital services worldwide. Currently Turkcell select digital services are being used in 192 countries.

The TV business is one of the most successful services for Turkcell. We launched the TV service way back in 2014. We have reached around 1.3 million subscribers for IPTV, and our fiber infrastructure and OTT services have already covered around 1 million subscribers. The OTT services, which are infrastructure independent, are a strong growth area for Turkcell. The success comes from the enhanced user experience and the innovative content delivery. Turkcell TV also provides live TV channels, and that has also largely contributed to its success. Thanks to these strategies, we have beaten many global competitors in this area.

As a telco, we are at greater advantage for delivering OTT services. We have the network, operator integrations and network integrations, all of which help us deliver differentiated services while competing with giant global OTT players. For example, we have many operator integrations for BiP. Thus we can enable real GSM calls and real fixed line calls. Users can manage a second number called via BiP, and they can use the fixed number on their mobile when they are at home. In this manner, we can offer several differentiated services.

Partnership with Huawei

Huawei has been the biggest and the most valuable strategic partner in our digital transformation journey, helping us create an ecosystem of technologies and services and generate value for our customers. Turkcell and Huawei have cooperated to build a public cloud in Turkey. With their technology-first insight, Huawei has gained extensive experience and technology expertise in their public cloud business domain. We are expecting to leveraging their expertise not just on the IaaS level but also at the PaaS and the SaaS level.

With their extensive portfolio of solutions, Huawei helps us create a powerful ecosystem, grow the talent pool in Turkey and also make training programs available for Turkcell's engineers and our partners. We have been expecting to build a strong ecosystem across the country to solve different problems coming from different industries. We need to understand the dynamics of the different industries like retail, oil & gas and finance, because there are different kinds of expertise required to understand your customers and you should also be aware of the technologies specific to each domain so that you can use the them to deliver solutions effectively. Huawei can also help us create use cases around our services, which will ultimately benefit our customers. Going forward, we would require Huawei's support at a global level as we expand our solutions to other markets.

The evolution to a digital service provider is not easy for a telecom operator, but the times demand that. In order to be successful, you need to adopt a customer-centric strategy, so you will focus on creating additional value through competitive services like the ones mentioned here. Telecom operators can lead the journey because they have a better understanding of the market and have more resources, so they can deliver better services than traditional digital service providers and OTTs. Data is another important consideration. Data being the most valuable resource of this century, we believe every country needs to not only get hold of their data for security or whatsoever reasons but they should also utilize them intelligently to enhance the value of their digital services. Next, we need to invest in people, need our people to develop deep expertise, because the solutions will come from them. We also need to make targeted investments to create more returns in shorter time. Last, collaboration is important to create an ecosystem. In that ecosystem, there is no single winner; but we all work together with a common goal to solve problems in our domain and our countries.