Turkcell (NYSE:TKC) (BIST:TCELL), announced that it has joined the Telecom Infra Project (TIP) and participated in the TIP Summit 2017, held in Santa Clara, Calif., USA on November 8th and 9th.

Founded in February 2016 by Facebook, Deutsche Telekom, Intel, Nokia and SK Telecom, TIP is an engineering-focused initiative driven by operators, suppliers, integrators, and startups to disaggregate the traditional network deployment approach. The community's collective aim is to collaborate on new technologies, examine new business approaches and spur new investments in the telecom space. Together with these leading companies, Turkcell plans to play a significant role in helping TIP achieve its goals. During the summit, Turkcell told the story of its transformation into a digital operator to its fellow telecom industry leaders.

Turkcell CEO Kaan Terzioglu stated that it is exciting to join TIP and continued, "We are delighted to become a member of TIP and look forward to collaborating with the other industry leaders in the initiative. The companies that come together at the TIP Summit 2017, including Turkcell, will work together to reimagine the traditional approach to building and deploying telecom network infrastructure. Joining this important global effort will also enable us to quickly bring new and innovative technologies to Turkey by contributing to the development of the next generation of open solutions for cost effective, efficient and flexible networks. As the world’s first digital operator we believe our unique perspective can help TIP achieve its mission to rapidly expand network deployments needed to meet the world’s ever-growing demand for connectivity. We believe that TIP will help close the digital divide and promote greater inclusion, and we call our regional and industry peers to join us in this important initiative.”

TIP Executive Director Leland Lai commented, “The addition Turkcell to our growing list of top global operators is of another clear sign of TIP’s growing momentum. We look forward to working with Turkcell and are excited that they can share the insights and lessons they learned from their digital transition with the TIP community.”

More than 500 of the global telecom industry’s top operators, suppliers, integrators and startups have joined the Telecom Infra Project since its founding in 2016. More information about TIP and its project groups is available at https://telecominfraproject.com/