BTK says new base stations in small settlements must use national products

New base stations in settlements of fewer than 5,000 people, and along motorways, high-speed rail lines and tunnels, must use National Communications Products under a September board decision of the Information and Communication Technologies Authority (BTK), its President, Mehmet Koçyiğit, said on 20 October.

Mr Koçyiğit described the rule at the 19th International Conference on Information Security and Cryptology, which BTK hosted, according to a BTK release. The release gives no number, date or text for the decision.

On 24 October the decision was not on BTK's list of published board decisions, where the most recent entries, published on 1 October, are a decision on maximum mobile prices and one revising a fixed broadband termination service, both dated 15 September. Neither the release nor Anadolu Agency's report of the speech, which also places the decision in September, says how a product qualifies under Türkiye's definition of a National Communications Product, how many sites are covered or when the rule takes effect.

Mr Koçyiğit presented the rule as part of a wider push. "Which device runs on our network is now also a matter of sovereignty," the release quotes him as saying (translated from Turkish). He recalled that the 5G licences require the share of locally made goods to rise in stages to 60 per cent and that of National Communications Products to 15 per cent, conditions Corridor Signal set out from Turkcell's annual report.

Security duties for every operator

At the same conference, Minister of Transport and Infrastructure Abdulkadir Uraloğlu said a board decision taken this year obliges all authorised operators, regardless of their economic size, to take additional security measures. The measure matches BTK decision 2026/DK-YED/71, dated 10 March in its text and listed as published on 24 March, which rewrote a 2014 board decision so that every operator BTK authorises must take the additional network and information security measures in the fourth chapter of the 2014 Network and Information Security Regulation, regardless of its annual net sales.

The same decision set the minimum paid-up capital for companies authorised by notification, with or without usage rights, at TL 10 million, and at TL 2.5 million for those applying to provide shared-use radio services. Operators already authorised in this way have until 31 December 2026 to send a sworn financial adviser's report showing that they meet the new floor, failing which all their authorisations are to be cancelled. The decision also raised the net-sales thresholds used in authorisation renewals and adequacy checks from TL 250,000 and TL 500,000 to TL 2 million and TL 4 million, and allowed operators authorised for satellite communications to serve other operators as well as their own subscribers, a change that bears on satellite broadband in Türkiye.

Disasters, motorways and rail

Drawing on the experience of the 6 February earthquakes, the 5G authorisation obliges operators to keep a communications capability that can reach a disaster area quickly, Mr Koçyiğit said on 20 October, and for emergencies operators must also keep ready, at the end of five years, 450 mobile base stations able to work over satellite links. At the Türkiye Century Summit on Transport and Infrastructure in Istanbul, he said the 5G authorisation also requires uninterrupted coverage of smart motorways and smart high-speed rail lines within one year of their opening, a second BTK release, dated 23 October, reports. Neither release says whether the 450 base stations are a total for the sector or a figure for each operator.

Mr Uraloğlu also said that where data is hosted, under which standards it is processed and who controls it are now strategic, economic and national questions. Ümit Önal, head of the Presidency's Cyber Security Directorate (Cumhurbaşkanlığı Siber Güvenlik Başkanı), told the conference that the Cyber Security Board had discussed data sovereignty as a separate item and that powers over artificial intelligence applications in the public sector had been brought under his directorate. Neither announced a rule on where data must be stored.

The next date in the documents is 31 December 2026, the deadline for authorised operators to meet the new capital floor. Neither release says when the September decision on base stations will be published or from when it applies.