Turkmenistan: Mobile Telecoms Market Overview

MTS

In 1994 Barash Communications Technologies was founded as a mobile service provider in Turkmenistan. Its dual-band GSM 900/1800 network went live in February 2000.

On the 27th of June 2005 MTS of Russia bought 51 percent of Barash Communications Technologies. The next day Turkmenistan’s government revoked MTS’s licence to operate a GSM network because it was an agreement with Barash Communications Technologies and not MTS. However, this decision was reversed on the 5th of July 2005.

MTS acquire the remaining 49 percent of Barash Communications Technologies on the 1st of November 2005 and rebranded the network as MTS on the 28th of September that year.

MTS have received a GPRS licence for use in Turkmenistan in October 2007 which came into operation in November became the first private Internet provider in Turkmenistan in April 2008. Previously Turkmenistan had very little contact with the outside world but new leader Kurbanguly Berdymukhamedov has promised to open the country up to foreign investment and more active diplomacy.

Despite the fact that MTS said that they are not responsible for which Web sites their users chose to access when they won the GRPS licence, Turkmentelekom (state-owned telco and the only other ISP) and MTS are forced to censor their subscribers’ Internet connection; private users cannot open a number of opposition and media websites.

TM Cell

TM Cell (also known as Altyn Asyr, or the translation, Golden Age) are the state-run cellco in Turkmentistan. The company was founded on 22 June 2004.

TM Cell began expanding its network in September 2007 to handle 100,000 subscribers by February 2008, following the commissioning of 154 new base stations supplied by Huawei, it has now surpassed this subscriber figure thank to this and other expansions into previously non-covered regions.