Türk Telekom International: a partnership for a long-term future

TTI is committed to making Turkey a major hub for data and voice exchange, as well as expanding to help their customers grow their regional and global reach. The partnership is a beneficial collaboration for both TTI and NTT DATA, with each offering services and geographic coverage that complement each other’s needs and strategies.

TTI gained a partner with a Tier 1 global IP backbone which is consistently ranked among the top networks worldwide, and able to support the carrier’s wide portfolio of services. Conversely, we gained a partner that allowed us to add resilience by gaining access to unique routes in the region where TTI operates.

Due to the complementary nature of their networks and services, the partnership was always planned to be long-term and ready to upgrade as new technologies came in and capacity needs increased, explains Ömer Demir, Chief Commercial Officer at TTI. This provided the basis for the two organizations to build a strong pathway toward the future.

The relationship between TTI and NTT DATA has been built on open communication between the two companies and the provision of high-quality services.

“We are very pleased the way this business is going from the commercial side, the customer service side, quality-wise, and global-reach-wise,” says Demir.

Much of this is about the people involved on both sides, with Demir saying that the NTT DATA team has been quick to respond to requests and provide any upgrades or rapid service activations needed. “It was NTT DATA’s team that gave us a warm feeling that we were going to really be able to have a very open discussion both on their strengths and on things to be improved,” he says.

He explains that NTT DATA made this evident right from the very start, when accommodating some technical network changes that TTI requested. In doing this, he says, NTT DATA planned a realistic schedule that it was able to stick to rather than overpromising on the project’s delivery date, thus creating a “confidence-building” effect moving forward.

The partnership has expanded over time, migrating from 10G to 100G ports to boost each other’s networks, and connecting new locations across and between continents. As the two companies have succeeded in collaborating so well together, they’ve also been discussing deeper tie-ups on services. “We keep growing and renewing the installed base, adding ports and migrating services to make both networks even more powerful, and to be in line with the ever-changing market requirements,” says Foust.

The fruitful nature of the relationship was also illustrated early in the pandemic in 2020, when TTI and its parent needed to add multiple ports to support the growing internet capacity demand generated by homeschooling and people working from home. In this situation, we were able to respond fast to these sudden, unexpected needs and deliver the extra capacity required within three working days.

And the advantages run both ways, ultimately paying off for the carriers’ end users. Foust points out that Turkey is a large market of around 85 million people, which is also beneficial for the content delivery networks connected by NTT DATA. “The more eyeballs connected to our network, the better experience we can give them,” he says. “So as long as we can make them happy and they stick with us, then we can make our other clients happy as well.”

Evidence of the closeness of the partnership is shown by the fact that the two will soon pass the seven-year mark and the relationship is still going strong.

Foust emphasizes that the strength of the partnership means NTT DATA and TTI have been able to maintain a good relationship even with organizational changes at the companies. “We always had a strong relationship within the companies, which has been developed over the past years,” he says.

“Our infrastructure team has a good relationship with TTI’s sales team, and our service engineering teams cooperate closely with each other.”

Demir also puts the longevity down to the long-term outlook between the two companies and the willingness to accommodate each other’s needs, meaning we’ve been able to overcome market challenges and work through any issues together. “The solution has been healthy business negotiation and transparently communicating needs and the market drivers behind those,” he says.

This kind of relationship is important in a market where capacity needs are ramping up to terabit levels, he says. “When you talk about terabits of international IP capacity, this is not a simple service.”

“With the people that NTT DATA has, once they understand exactly what you want, they come up with a fitting solution for today’s needs and for growing trends.”