Strange law in Turkey
 

Hi,
As I read here, to use my mobile in Turkey (with Turkish SIM) I have to go to sales point with invoice for it and register it. It sounds very strange to me - I have never seen something like that before. Registered SIMs - that's normal, but registered mobiles!?
Have someone been to Turkey after 2005 and bought there SIM to use with own mobile phone? And what if I don't have invoice for my mobile?

This was an issue in Thailand. For many years only phones sold and registered in Thailand could be used in Thailand with a Thai SIM. Eventually they got to the point that you could register your phone with customs at the airport then show the receipt at the mobile phone office to have the IMEI entered into the carrier's database. I don't know if they still register phones in Thailand or not.

Does it end up mattering? If you register Phone X and then put your SIM into Phone Y, I assume it still works.

Seems a silly policy to have.

I registered my SIM in Turkey in October 2005 without having to show them my phone.

Unregistered phones get blocked by the networks there after approx. 3 weeks (IMEI blocked by the operators).
So usually for holiday its no problem but for longer stays you can not use the phone anymore before you register it.

Chris

Some people have reported successfully registering their phones for a Turkcell SIM:

http://www.noonsite.com/Members/doina/R2007-04-02-2

Dave

Registering mobile
 

Re one of the comments below, it is not correct to say that once you have registered your local SIM card you can use it on any other phone. My SIM card WAS registered with Vodafone Turkey and indeed it still is registered with them with my passport and other details. It worked for a month last year and 9 days this year but I was cut off on the 10th day (yesterday) because my Palm organiser phone was not itself registered apparently when I bought the SIM last year.

Hi,
I'm back from Turkey. I bought Turkcell and Avea sims.
Turkcell was working good without registering phone - only copy of passport. Also service in Turkcell shop was good - few minutes and I have working card.
With Avea I have more problems... First, in shop they spoke English very little. Next, they didn't know what to fill, what to copy and what to give me. They even didn't know the price of sim... Finally my Avea card wasn't working...

This was posted to a sailing forum. I'm reposting it here with Jan's permission.

Next episode:

I'll be in Turkey from friday for a couple of weeks so I'll surely get some fresh experience...

I came back home from Turkey 2 nights ago.
I bought a Turkcell Hazir Kart prepaid card at Sabiha Gökçen airport in Istanbul at a kiosk where it was written, in English, "Cell phone registration". The man there, BTW, didn't speak nearly any English at all; he just sold me the card with 100 Kontör for 40 YTL and said I didn't need any registration (at least from what I could understand from the Turkish-English mix).

The card worked perfectly for all my holiday. After few minutes I received the automatic configuration SMS for internet, wap and MMS. I just used internet on EDGE and it always worked quite well. Quality of voice was also good (I cannot say the same for Vodafone TR I used with my business postpaid with passport option).

I don't know which tariff I had, all information is provided in Turkish only, which is quite a hard language to understand.

After about 10 days I received 2 SMS from Turkcell, in Turkish, with my IMEI number, saying that I had to register my mobile phone or it would be blocked. Since the deadline was just 3 days after my flight back to Italy (i.e. tomorrow) I wasn't much worried about it, but I went to a Turkcell official shop in Istanbul to ask if I could register. I didn't have my passport with me at that moment (which is compulsory for registration) but they were asking me for a "subscription" also for prepaid, which I never understand what it was... At the end I didn't register it and tomorrow my IMEI will be blocked...

In any case an idiot law and all very complicated way to respect it. Along with the very little English spoken by Turkish people it makes things quite complicated.

I would send an e-mail to the carrier, explaining to them how difficult you found it to comply with the law. They could make it easier by having multi-lingual registration forms on their webiste with instructions to assist the customer in dealing with the company's agents in getting the SIM registered.

Avea has papers in English, but... staff doesn't know English :P At least in Manavgat, where I've been. I had to show pass to buy SIM, but they didn't took my IMEI.