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ISTANBUL, Aug 28 (Reuters) - Vodafone Turkey plans to paythe 778 million euro ($877 million)purchase price of five new 4Gmobile phone frequencies with cash from its parent company thisyear, its local chief executive said on Friday.
The Turkish arm of Vodafone Plc this week securedthe bandwiths for enhanced mobile data and voice services in agovernment tender that lured a higher than expected total of3.96 billion euro winning bids.
The bids from Vodafone and Turkish rivals Avea and Turkcell will be subject to anapproval process before a final decision on allocations is made.
"Concerning the payment, we have the Vodafone Group behindus. We want to make the payment in cash in 2015 with resourcesfrom our group," Vodafone Turkey Chief Executive Gokhan Oguttold a news conference.
He said the company had pledged to invest more than 2billion lira ($685 million) in Turkey in the previous andcurrent financial years, and had already invested 1.3 billion.
The tender had been postponed in May, weeks after PresidentTayyip Erdogan urged Turkey not to waste time with 4G and movestraight to 5G, for which technical standards do not yet exist.
4G and 5G refer to the latest technology standards formobile devices. Fourth-generation technology, which wentmainstream worldwide around 2010, enables users to watch videosand download big documents on their phones.
In an apparent bid to placate Erdogan, Turkish officials haddubbed the technology being auctioned as 4.5G, but subsequentlydropped the term.
Wednesday's tender was a sale of mobile spectrum used allover Europe for 4G, which allows for up to 10 times fastermobile broadband than 3G technology.($1 = 0.8870 euros)($1 = 2.9193 liras) (Reporting by Ceyda Caglayan; Writing by Daren Butler; editingby David Dolan and Keith Weir)
