Turkcell has taken an innovative approach to the thorny problem of bringing mobile broadband to very rural areas, rolling out LTE-Advanced to nine rural villages using the locally produced ULAK base station. The base stations were developed by the Turkish defence supplier Aselsan with telecoms vendors Netas and Argela. Turkcell contributed its requirements and supported the production process. It is initially upgrading villages in the Cankiri region, north east of the Turkish capital Ankara, from 2G to 4.5G, as part of the national Universal Connectivity project, which requires Turkcell to roll out 4.5G to 1,799 rural communities to help lower the digital divide. Another aspect of that government policy is that 10% of the rural roll-outs must use domestically produced…