Vodafone Turkey plans to pay 4G price from group resources

ISTANBUL, Aug 28 (Reuters) - Vodafone Turkey plans to pay the 778 million euro ($877 million)purchase price of five new 4G mobile phone frequencies with cash from its parent company this year, its local chief executive said on Friday.

The Turkish arm of Vodafone Plc this week secured the bandwiths for enhanced mobile data and voice services in a government tender that lured a higher than expected total of 3.96 billion euro winning bids.

The bids from Vodafone and Turkish rivals Avea and Turkcell will be subject to an approval process before a final decision on allocations is made.

"Concerning the payment, we have the Vodafone Group (NasdaqGS: VOD - news) behind us. We want to make the payment in cash in 2015 with resources from our group," Vodafone Turkey Chief Executive Gokhan Ogut told a news conference.

He said the company had pledged to invest more than 2 billion lira ($685 million) in Turkey in the previous and current financial years, and had already invested 1.3 billion.

The tender had been postponed in May, weeks after President Tayyip Erdogan urged Turkey not to waste time with 4G and move straight to 5G, for which technical standards do not yet exist.

4G and 5G refer to the latest technology standards for mobile devices. Fourth-generation technology, which went mainstream worldwide around 2010, enables users to watch videos and download big documents on their phones.

In an apparent bid to placate Erdogan, Turkish officials had dubbed the technology being auctioned as 4.5G, but subsequently dropped the term.

Wednesday's tender was a sale of mobile spectrum used all over Europe for 4G, which allows for up to 10 times faster mobile broadband than 3G technology. ($1 = 0.8870 euros) ($1 = 2.9193 liras) (Reporting by Ceyda Caglayan; Writing by Daren Butler; editing by David Dolan and Keith Weir)