Does anyone have a subscription that they obtained themselves ?(if your company did it for you or you have a corporate account, that's not what I'm looking for)

I don't really have any problem using the konturs, but I am going to be travelling outside of turkey a lot and I would like to keep my Turkish number functioning and not have to deal with foreign sims. I just want to be able to call internationally, no matter where I am, and pay for it later, basically.

Is it expensive? A total hassle to set up? Not going to give me what I want?

Thanks for your help.

I find the question really funny as Turkey was relatively late to pay as you go and until not that long ago, what you describe was the only type of account that there was..... and is still the way most serious people conduct their phone business. As to your questions, how long is a piece of string. Where would you be travelling, will you be calling or receiving more. Why don;t you go to the Turkcell and Vodafone websites and look at their roaming rates for an idea. Seriously I have had months where I've talked a lot and been roaming and had $200 bills and I have had months with $5000 bills, it really depends where you go and what the rates are.

Roaming will be more expensive? No shit! Had no idea. Since with konturs I can't roam at all, seems like sort of an obvious cost increase.

What I really need to know is if Turkcell is going to demand a lot of money/paperwork/pounds of flesh from me to set this up. In my experience, going to talk to them is generally not a solution to confusion. And, is a subscription going to increase my phone costs for calls in Turkey?

This isn't 1994, there is no front end cost to beoming a customer, just documentation. Benerally fixed plans are cheaper than "kontors", may depend on your plan and volume however.

You can roam using kontors. Go onto your online account and click the right box.
What happened to the Vodafone and Turkcell partners deal where roaming in a country on the list meant you got charged local/reduced roaming rates?
Check it out.

I first had a Turkcell subscription, then a Telsim subscription until a former student who knew his Turkish telecom industry advised to do as he does and go the kontor route. (I would say he was a perfectly 'serious' businessman, tp, media advisor to the Turkish Chamber of Commerce President). There is approximately a (let me see if I remember the exact percentage) 27% tax on subscription service that you don't have with pay as you go.

Good luck, cequirk.

yes, but won't I run out of konturs in about 30 seconds if I am calling from Kyiv to Baku on Turkcell (or someone calls me)? I would have to buy thousands at a time before I leave, and I will be gone for a month! That's what I would like to avoid, but I think I might have to deal with it.

That extra tax is what I recall hearing something about.

Thanks. I think I'm going to skip the subscription

Yes the tax is higher, but the call charges on most rates lower, so its somewhat false economy. Then again, as I said above it all really has to do with your call volume.