Turkcell's 5G-Advanced trial clocks in at 32 Gbps

In a trial in Istanbul, they managed to achieve maximum downlink throughput of just over 32 Gbps using a combination of mid-band and millimetre-wave (mmWave) spectrum.

Two iterations of ZTE's active antenna unit (AAU) were put to work. One for the 1.6-GHz of mmWave spectrum, and another for the mid-band spectrum – n78 to be precise, which covers 3300 MHz-3800 MHz, and has been allocated for time division duplexing (TDD) tech. ZTE's customer premises equipment (CPE) was also used.

ZTE said the trial paves the way for further joint research with Turkcell into 5G-Advanced use cases for both consumers and businesses.

Given that ZTE's mmWave AAU is theoretically capable of supporting peak speeds of more than 256 Gbps, this is also unlikely to be the last record attempt by Turkcell, or any other ZTE customer for that matter.

For its part, ZTE will be keen to generate more speed-related headlines, if only to stay within touching distance of bigger Chinese rival Huawei.

In mid-October, U.A.E.-based e& set a new 5G-Advanced world record of 62 Gbps by aggregating various high and mid-band frequencies. While the official announcement didn't name the vendor that provided the network equipment, Huawei is known to be a major e& supplier when it comes to 5G-Advanced.

For Turkcell – which counts the government's Turkey Wealth Fund (TWF) as its single biggest shareholder – opting to work with ZTE shows that Turkey is not about to fall in line with the EU when it comes to banning Chinese vendors.

Turkey's accession negotiations have been on extended hiatus for more than five years, but technically they are not dead yet.

But Turkcell's continuing partnership with a vendor non grata like ZTE suggests that if anything, Ankara is drifting further away from Brussels when it comes to supply chain policy.

Meanwhile, Turkcell also recently published its third quarter financial results.

Revenue increased 6.9% year-on-year to 40.2 billion lira ($1.2 billion), while EBITDA jumped 10.4% to TRY17.7 billion ($515.2 million).

It added 515,000 postpaid mobile customers and 47,000 fibre customers, and its fibre footprint grew by 67,000 premises.

Turkcell ended September with 2.4 million fibre customers in total, up from 2.2 million a year earlier. Its postpaid mobile base weighed in at 28.6 million from 26.7 million, while its prepaid base fell to 10.1 million from 11.5 million. Machine-to-machine (M2M) connections increased to 4.9 million from 4.3 million.

Turkcell's KPIs heading in the right direction is a promising growth story, but given its relationship with Chinese kit makers, it's the wrong direction when it comes to its relationship with the EU and its allies.