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The three Turkish
mobile phone companies have
prepaid calling plans: you buy a SIM
card for your GSM mobile
phone, register for service, and start
calling.
Calls are tracked based on usage
units (kontör).
The cost of a call depends upon your
usage
plan (there are many), and
what you paid for your usage
units,
but
ranges
from about YTL0.30
to YTL1.80
per minute (about US$0.23 to US$1.35,
or €0.19 to €1.14).
In general, the more usage
units you buy at one time, and the
more you use,
the lower your per-minute charges can
be.
If you plan to make just
a few short calls during your time
in Turkey,
you can expect to pay near the higher
amount. If you do a lot of calling
in Turkey, and select an appropriate
calling plan, you may pay
nearer the lower amount.
You can order prepaid SIM
cards from
various companies and have them delivered
to you before you depart for Turkey,
or you can go to a mobile phone
shop in Turkey and buy a starter packet.
Starter packets are offered by Turkey's
three mobile
phone companies. You pay
for the packet (Shop around! Different
shops may charge more or less for the
same packet!), insert the SIM card
in your phone, fill in the registration
form, give it to the shop owner for
activation, and your phone should be
activated within a few hours (after
you've been registered on the network).
The mobile
phone companies are always offering
new and modified starter packets, and
the marketing programs can be complex
and impenetrable, but the basic packets
usually look like this:
Turkcell
Turkcell offers a Hazir
Kart ("Ready [SIM]
Card") packet
with 100 kontör (usage
units) for about YTL30,
or YTL0.30
per kontör. There is
also a 250 kontör packet.
The basic charge for Hazir
Kart prepaid calls
is 6 kontör per
minute under the BirFiyat ("Single
Price") plan. Under the BizBizeCELL plan,
calls cost
4 kontör per
minute to other Turkcell
customers, or 10 kontör per
minute to customers of other Turkish
mobile phone companies.
Telsim
Telsim's MyCep packet
charges 5 kontör per
minute to other Telsim customers, or
10 kontör per minute
to customers of other Turkish mobile
phone companies. If you recharge your kontörs
at least monthly, with 250 kontör,
your rate for calls to other Telsim
customers drops to 1 kontör per
40 seconds (1.5 kontör per
minute). There are several other plans
as well.
Avea
Avea's basic rate for its Mobil programs is
5 kontör (about YTL0.50)
per minute to any other phone in Turkey,
but there's also a plan charging 2 kontör per
minute to call other Avea customers,
5 kontör per minute to
call landline phones, and 11 kontör per
minute to call customers of other Turkish
mobile phone companies. 100 kontör cost YTL11,
making each kontör worth YTL0.11,
or 250 kontör for YTL24
(YTL0.096
per kontör).
International Calls
International calls to Europe
or the USA or Canada may cost about
13.5 kontör per
minute to GSM mobile phones, or 4 kontör per
minute to landline phones. Thus a three-minute
international call to another mobile
phone might cost about YTL12
(US$9, €7.60).
Turkey's
Mobile Phone Companies & Networks
International
Roaming for Mobile Phones in Turkey
SIM
Cards
Rent
a GSM Mobile Phone in Turkey
Rent
a GSM Mobile Phone Before You Leave
Home
How
to Use Your Mobile Phone in Turkey
Mobile
Phone Homepage
Telephones
in Turkey
Communications
in Turkey
Travel
Details
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