Turkish satellite telecommunications and cable TV service provider Türksat is accepting bids on a new satellite it intends to launch and begin using by 2011, Özkan Dalbay, the company's general manager, has said. Speaking to the Anatolia news agency last Friday, Dalbay said the company will send letters including preliminary specifications and technical details to satellite-producing companies by the end of this month, describing what type of satellite Türksat is in the market for. Satellite manufacturers will return their responses and opinions on the project within the following one-and-a-half months, the general manager said. He further explained the bid process, saying: “We will call the company whose bid we choose after examining their files. Our current plans are to sign a contract with a manufacturing company in the next two-and-a-half months and to commence the production of the satellite by the end of this year at the latest.”

Dalbay said that after they sign the manufacturing contract, Türksat will open a bidding process for the launch of the satellite. “In previous projects, we held a single tender for both the production and launching jobs. The winner manufacturing company organized the tender for launching and made quite a profit off it. But now, we see ourselves as quite capable of organizing both tenders,” he said. The new satellite will be able to function in C-band, enabling broadcasting to countries around the equator zone, where there are many concurrent air movements and the skies often feature a thick layer of clouds, Dalbay said, pointing out, “With the launch of 4A, Turkish satellites will now be able to cover all of the African continent in addition to the current coverage of Turkey, Europe, the Middle East, northern Africa, Central Asia and China.” Dalbay said the capacity of the 4A satellite will be 10 percent greater than that of the Türksat 3A satellite. Additionally, 50 Turkish engineers will be assigned to all manufacturing processes of Türksat 4A as a part of a technology transfer that will be included in the contract, Dalbay added. These engineers will later be involved in a project to produce Turkey's first national telecommunications satellite, which will be designed and prepared entirely by Turkish engineers and which will be launched into space by 2014 or 2015.

Turkey's oldest satellite currently in service, Türksat 1C, will be abandoned as space trash after the launching of Türksat 4A in 2011. The company is now planning to find a replacement satellite for 1C, to protect its rights to the 31.3 degree East orbit where the 1C satellite currently holds position. Turkey's new generation communication satellite Türksat 3A was launched from French Guiana on June 2008 to handle much of the broadcast traffic of Türksat 1C.