5G New Generation Communication Technologies Signature Ceremony

“5G New Generation Communication Technologies Signature Ceremony” took place at TÜBİTAKFeza Gürsey Hall, with the participation of Minister of Science, Industry and Technology Faruk Özlü, President of TÜBİTAK Prof. Hasan Mandal, President of Information Technologies and Communication Institution Ömer Fatih Sayan, and OSTIM Chairman Orhan Aydın and HTK Chairman Murat Çelik.

The signing ceremony of the "5G Base Station and Telecommunication Systems Project", which was carried out together with TÜBİTAK, Telecommunication companies and Communication Technologies Clusters (HTK) which was established in OSTIM in order to develop domestic and national telecommunication systems in 2017 was held. Speaking at the ceremony, Science, Industry and Technology Minister Dr. Faruk Özlü, "According to the calculations made by the World Economic Forum, digital transformation market is predicted to reach $ 100 billion in the next 10 years, and thanks to our work for Turkey's industrial revolution and the digital transformation program, we aim to get 1 trillion-dollar share of this $ 100 trillion" he said.

Minister Faruk Özlü pointed out the importance of the "owned R & D" concept and said that the 5G business association is a significant example. Science, Industry and Technology Minister remarking that signatures in scope of cooperation constitutes an important ring of the target "Digital Turkey", stated that "Digital products and new technologies such as; the internet, sensor technology, smart automation technology, robotics, data analytics, artificial intelligence, increased reality, cloud technology, and articulated production have begun to play a serious role in our lives. Science, Industry and Technology Minister also said that “As the government and ministry, we are aware of this process. We see digital transformation as one of the most important instruments to direct the future of our country, we are already putting our goals, producing our projects and preparing for the digital world."

Minister Özlü explained that they are presenting a clear road map by carefully analyzing trends, opportunities, and reshaping relationships in the world. Moreover, Minister Özlü underlined that they target a Turkey which provides digital transformation in all sectors with the roadmap and increases public and private sector institutional quality, and emphasized that with "Digital Turkey”, they would be able to come to a country with high competitive power that can make a name for itself in the world in every field.

Minister Faruk Özlü expressed that “With our work of Turkey's industrial revolution and the digital transformation program, we aim to get a share of nearly $ 1 trillion from the 100 trillion dollars of market. We have shaped our whole program according to this purpose, and we have done an intensive work in the last 1.5 years. We have created Turkey's industrial revolution and the digital transformation roadmap from 6 components. 5G New Generation Communication Technologies is also a very important move that will increase our market share because we predict nearly $ 7 billion naturalization.” Science, Industry and Technology Minister also stated that “Turkish economy has increased 7.4 percent in the first quarter of this year, but the biggest problem is the current account deficit. The only way to decrease the current deficit is to produce technology, so the country put its focus on it.”

"17 Companies Will Work for 5G"

Minister Özlü stated that they will support 17 companies that will develop 5G next generation communication technologies through TÜBİTAK Technology and Innovation Support Programs Directorate and, they will increase the support for 5G in the next period. The Minister of Science, Industry and Technology, who draw attention that the market size of the information and communication sector has increased by nearly 10 time and reached $25 billion since 2002, also worded that "The budget we allocated to 256 public-information projects in 2017 was realized as 1.5 billion dollars. While the number of broadband subscribers was 3 thousand in 2002, it has increased to 69 million todays. In the 100^th anniversary of our republic, we are going to make very significant progress towards digital transformation. Even, we will build together a Turkey which has completed the digital transformation. The only deficit that Turkey faced with is the technology deficit, and we will try to compensate it by working heartily.

Speaking at the meeting, TÜBİTAK President Prof. Dr. Hasan Mandal stated that as institution, they had a great distance in 5G sector in a short time and that 10 university, 17 companies, 3 operators, 6 technology development zones, 1 organized industrial zone and 1 regulatory body will work together for 5G new generation communication technologies. President of TÜBİTAK, who said that they had come together with the university, industry and techno park administrators, indicated that the most important key words for emerging R&D development are as follows: “Support system is mostly designed with input focus, so outputs are not measured well enough. The activities of commercialization, which results from R&D and innovation, are very weak. The product verification cannot be made because the end user is not in the projects, and the technology based product is not available in the market. Large-budget R&D consortia do not have a phased support system which allows control points to be created on intermediate outputs for projects. There is information asymmetry between big companies and SMEs in terms of technological competence; supports are not encouraging multidisciplinary, multi-partner R&D collaborations, and large-scale projects interacting with the end user are not common. As we all know, these are the hardest parts of the ecosystem in our country. Today, we mention here not only on the technical dimension of 5G generation technology, but also the business methodology in terms of TÜBİTAK.”

In the signature ceremony, President of TÜBİTAK said that “We have been renewing ourselves. In this context we have made some changes in the monitoring procedures of support units”. Prof. Hasan Mandal stated that the process with new achievement started with university, public and industry cooperation.

President of Information Technologies and Communication Institution Ömer Fatih Sayan stated that information technologies are the most important driving force for the development of a country and said “I hope that the local and national 5G information network projects will be finalized in the proper time and will produce efficient outcomes”. After the talks the protocol was signed.