NGA Transition in Turkey: A Comparative Analysis of LLU and FTTX in An Immature Broadband Market

Turkey is a country with an immature broadband industry. No competitive networks are operative in the broadband market and high-speed access is underdeveloped. The country faces critical regulatory junctures that will have strategic importance for future network growth. Open access regimes such as those of the European countries generally refrain from dictating a specific access model, an approach that is also applied to next-generation networks. In contrast, IP-level bitstream access (BSA) has been the predominant model governing broadband competition in Turkey. As the country is at the crossroads of implementing a framework for next-generation, high-bit rate broadband networks, it faces the question of whether it should imitate the European path by encouraging local loop unbundling (LLU) and other intermediate access policies or whether it should chart a different course that might lead to faster next-generation access (NGA) deployment. To analyse this question, the article reports a quantitative analysis of two possible transition paths from BSA: reliance on copper LLU as an interim step and a more direct and to-the-end route of fibre deployment (FTTX). For each scenario, the pay-back periods and break-even points are calculated. It is concluded that broadband competition requires remedies that facilitate FTTX deployment to tackle the problem of lack of innovation as well as to ensure competitive and faster NGA transition in Turkey. Last but not least, mandatory duct sharing rather than unbundling seems to be the most promising way to sustain and develop NGA competition in Turkey.