Mobile and mobile internet provider Turkey

It's a pain in the butt to get mobile access in Turkey, but you it can be done. Your chances depend on how nice the person you find to sell you the prepaid SIM is, since they'll have to register the IMEI on your mobile phone with them.

Easiest option in Turkey is to buy one of their portable 3G hotspots - they run about US$80 and include the hotspot hardware with 4GB of data. Failing that you buy a prepaid SIM for around US$50 with 4GB of data. Hopefully you're going through a big tourist hub like Istanbul and you'll get a sales associate that's used to opening foreign accounts!

There are now lots of companies that sell Prepaid SIM for wherever you are going, they arrive by post before you leave home and you just put then in the normal unlocked GSM phone.

As we are going to turkey in a month’s time, I can’t tell you how well any given company works yet.

In the end we just went into a mobile shop in turkey, we had to try 3 so as to find one that spoke good English and understood the setup. We brought a prepaid SIM, and added one off data and call plan to it, they needed to copy our passports as part of the process, and the paper work took the shop about half an hour. (Our iPhone is not locked to a network, as we brought it from Apple directly.)

The main problem is that if your mobile phone is seen on a network in Turkey for much more than 2 weeks, the network locks you out, this is to stop Turkish people importing phones without paying the import tax.

I recommend you to rent a 3G mobile WiFi from one of the companies that operate in Turkey. You will get the device and carry it in your pocket, so it will allow you to have internet access up to 10 devices with wireless internet property.

Some companies offer unlimited data usage, while others are selling the usage with an extra fee. There is a mobile hotspot rental directory called Rent-Wifi , there you can check the prices and advantages by yourself. You also might find it easier to look at Alldaywifi and Global Wifi Rental first.

We have rented a Wifi modem from a company called Iugo (www.iugo.travel) at Istanbul Ataturk airport. During our visit in Istanbul, we connected our 3 phones to that device and used internet. It was fast and had unlimited internet. We paid total of 29 Euro per 5 days. Also at the airport there are 3 GSM company shops, Turkcell, Avea and Vodafone. There are selling prepaid lines and you can also buy data packages. Average prepaid line price wihout data package is 80-85 Turkish Lira, which is around 27 Euro.