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Turkey president: Nuts to 4G networks, we're cutting straight to 5G

It’s not just the Chinese who think 4 is a bad number

Turkey's president Recep Tayyip Erdogan has said that as Turkey doesn’t have 4G yet, the country might as well wait a couple of years and go straight to 5G.

This is a pretty bold move given that we don’t even know what 5G is yet – although there are expected to be some announcements from the ITU in June.

Most countries are expecting 5G in 2020, and the ITU calls it IMT-2020. Industry experts expect the first commercial deployments of 5G in the run-up to the Tokyo Olympics in 2020.

The president told local reporters that he thought 4G would be a waste of time and the he didn’t want Turkey to become a “garbage dump” for other country’s redundant equipment.

In response to the president’s comments Turkey’s Ministry of Transportation, Maritime Affairs and Communications has delayed the auction, which includes 800MHz spectrum, by three months to 26 August.

It’s not yet been cancelled completely, but that may yet happen. ®

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