Europe-Asia Corridor in Telecommunications

Türk Telekom International (TTI) is the international wholesale arm of Türk Telekom, Turkiye's leading telecommunications provider with a legacy spanning over 180 years. TTI serves as the premier connectivity bridge between Europe, the Middle East, Caucasus and Asia, operating one of the most strategically positioned fiber networks in the CEE region.

Headquartered in Istanbul, TTI leverages Turkiye's unique position at the crossroads of three continents (Europe/Middle East/Asia) to offer unparalleled low-latency connectivity along the Europe-Asia corridor. With a 40,000+ km fiber network, Points of Presence across 17 countries, and coverage in Romania, Hungary, Bulgaria, Germany and the Netherlands within the CEE region, TTI has established itself as the backbone of digital connectivity in the region. In customer growth over the past year, the company onboarded 22 new wholesale customers in the CEE region (carriers, ISPs, content providers), while enterprise customer base grew 35% year-over-year, driven by Cloud Connect adoption.

A geographic bridge
The General Manager of Türk Telekom International, Yavuz Yildirim explains that what sets TTI apart from competitors is that it provides a geographic bridge connecting three continents – something unmatched in CEE. Also, it is able to offer its customers a comprehensive portfolio with Dark Fiber, Managed Wavelength, Ethernet, IP Transit, DIA, IP-VPN, Cloud Connect, Remote-IX, IPX, Co-Location and Wholesale Voice. As for infrastructure depth, it has at its disposal 40,000+ kms of owned and leased fiber infrastructure with strategic redundancy and a carrier ecosystem consisting of 150+ voice interconnections and extensive IP peering. Its Eurasia Express Route is a Turkiye-based corridor that reduces Europe-to-Asia round-trip latency by up to 40% vs. alternative routes – connecting European, Middle Eastern, and Chinese markets with unmatched speed.

Service innovation – IPX ecosystem evolution
Over the past 12 months, TTI has significantly advanced its IPX ecosystem, strengthening its position as a strategic interconnection hub across East Central Europe. The IPX platform has evolved into a multi-protocol interworking environment supporting SS7, Diameter, and HTTP signaling within a unified framework, enabling operators to accelerate VoLTE and 5G roaming deployments without costly core network upgrades. The platform introduces intelligent traffic orchestration – dynamic routing, automated policy control, and real-time service optimization – delivering measurable improvements in latency reduction, onboarding speed and operational efficiency.

Commercially, the upgraded IPX ecosystem has reduced interconnection deployment timelines by up to 60%, significantly accelerated partner onboarding, and enabled faster time-to-market for roaming and messaging services across CEE, the General Manager points out.

Services, solutions and initiatives
As for new services, solutions or initiatives Türk Telekom International has launched in the past 12 months and how these have benefited the market and its customers/partners, Yavuz Yildirim proudly mentions a couple of examples.

TTI launched the Enhanced Cloud Connect Service dedicated multi-cloud connectivity across CEE PoPs enabling direct, private connections to AWS, Azure, Google Cloud, Oracle Cloud and 150+ other CSPs. It eliminated internet-based connectivity, reducing latency by 60% and improving security posture for enterprise customers. It has been deployed in eight CEE markets with 35+ active enterprise customers within six months of launch.

As a next-generation subsea corridor, AMEERS is a unique cable system developed through the collaboration of six carriers, with TTI playing the leading role. Built on a partnership-driven model, AMEERS differs from traditional submarine cable projects where each participant is typically required to invest USD millions. Instead, the concept was to integrate existing network segments owned by each carrier into a seamless end-to-end system connecting the Gulf region to Europe through a diversified, protected, and one of the shortest available routes. AMEERS has proven highly successful, both in terms of the revenue it has generated and the value it has brought to the telecommunications industry. Building on this success, the next-generation system, AMEERS2, has been successfully launched, further enhancing connectivity and expanding the capabilities of the original network.

As Syria re-establishes its position in the international telecommunications market, Türk Telekom International has been proud to support this transformation. The service provider developed a transit corridor between Syria and Turkiye, leveraging more than five interconnection points to deliver maximum network diversity and resilience, enabling connectivity in a transforming market. In less than a year, TTI successfully provisioned nearly 1 Tbps of capacity for Syrian operators, significantly enhancing their connectivity capabilities and supporting the growth and development of their businesses. This achievement reflects TTI’s commitment to enabling reliable, high-capacity international connectivity and contributing to the advancement of the telecommunications sector in Syria.

Evolving political dynamics in the South Caucasus have unlocked new connectivity opportunities. TTI is establishing terabit-scale connections from Southeastern European Points of Presence (Sofia, Bucharest, Istanbul) through Armenia and Nakhchivan to Azerbaijan and onward to Central Asia – leveraging recently normalized regional relations. This corridor provides a direct, geopolitically diverse alternative to traditional routes, connecting the Caucasus and Caspian regions at terabit capacity levels with multi-year agreements already in place.

Türk Telekom International introduced comprehensive DDoS protection as a service that leverages its European scrubbing center with a multi-vector protection up to 1 Tbps. It is integrated with IP Transit and Cloud Connect for end-to-end security.

Within the CEE region, TTI added 500+ kms of new dark fiber routes, connecting additional data centers and carrier hotels in Bucharest, Budapest and Warsaw. These routes support growing demand for dedicated infrastructure from hyper-scalers and financial institutions.

Exceptional customer service, substantial revenue growth
TTI boasts 24/7/365 multi-lingual NOC support (English, Turkish, Romanian, Hungarian, Bulgarian, German, Czech); an average incident response time of 8 minutes (industry benchmark: 30 minutes); customer portal with real-time bandwidth analytics, ticket tracking, and self-service provisioning; and dedicated customer success managers for all enterprise and wholesale accounts.

Over the past 12 months, TTI has driven 22% revenue growth, expanded network capacity by 50%, launched innovative services including enhanced Cloud Connect and 2.0 with zero-touch provisioning, and achieved 94% customer renewal rates. With all that achievement, Türk Telekom International continues to demonstrate regional leadership, technological innovation and exceptional customer partnerships, the General Manager concludes.