INTERNET SPEED ISSUE OF TURKEY

Abstract

The internet, used by a large population around the world, has become a part of daily life. The internet is used in scientific research, education, commerce, health, communication, banking, tourism, transportation and many similar fields. The need for internet increases in parallel with digitalization and becomes more and more important day by day. Especially during the covid-19 epidemic, providing education over the internet and doing some work from home over the internet has more increased dependence on the internet. Turkey has one of the 20 largest economies in the world by economy size. It is an important country with a population of approximately 84 million. According to the Turkey Statistical Institute (TurkStat) data, in 2020, 90.7% of house in Turkey have access to the internet and the proportion of individuals using the internet is 79.0%. In Turkey, which is one of the important countries of the world and where the use of the internet is widespread, the internet is not at the desired speed. According to the latest report of Speedtest, founded by Ookla in 2006, which measures internet speed most accurately and regularly publishes the "Speedtest Global Index", Turkey is ranked 103 out of 175 countries with Fixed Broadband Internet Speed. Moreover, the 30.51 Mbps download speed is far below the global average of 96.98 Mbps. It is remarkable that the internet speeds of countries that are incomparable to Turkey in terms of economic size and some of which can be called island states are higher than Turkey. These countries are Andorra, Macau (SAR), Liechtenstein, San Marino, Barbados, Trinidad and Tobago, Grenada, Southern Cyprus Greek Region, Armenia, Montenegro, Kosovo, The Bahamas, Saint Lucia, Guyana, Laos, Madagascar, Belize, Dominica, North Macedonia, Côte d'Ivoire, Saint Kitts and Nevis. Turkey has passed to 4,5 G as of April 1, 2016 to increase the speed of the internet. Despite this, Turkey's internet speed is relatively slow and this is an important ergonomic problem. Low connection speeds negatively affect both education and all sectors where the internet is used during the global epidemic. In this study, the reasons for the slow internet speed in Turkey are examined and various solutions to the problem are proposed.