Kyivstar, Ukraine’s largest mobile operator, announced that 2026 will be the last year the company uses 3G technology in Ukraine.
“We want to strengthen our technological leadership compared to our competitors,” said Kyivstar CEO and President Alexander Komarov on Thursday during a conference call on the operator’s Q1 2026 financial results.
According to him, the company has nearly completed its licensing obligations to provide 4G coverage to nearly 97% of the country’s population, while also ensuring full LTE coverage along all major roads.
Komarov noted that he does not expect 5G to be rolled out in Ukraine before the end of the war.
“The most likely scenario is something like 12 months after the war. And that is precisely why we view our investments in LTE technology as strategic,” the mobile operator’s CEO noted.
Regarding the decrease in Kyivstar’s subscriber base in the first quarter of 2026 by 0.4 million, or 3%, to 22 million, the company’s CEO noted that this decline reflects a general market trend driven by three factors: a decrease in the number of dual SIM cards, a certain increase in prices, and the overall demographic situation in the country.
At the same time, Komarov pointed out that, according to statistics from the national regulator, Kyivstar has maintained its market share in terms of subscriber numbers and even increased it by 0.1 percentage points in 2025 compared to 2024.
“We have been relatively stable over the past few years, with a subscriber market share of over 47%,” he stated.
As reported, Kyivstar increased its EBITDA by 28.5% in the first quarter of 2026—to UAH 7.5 billion—while revenue grew by 31.3%—to UAH 13.9 billion.
The ARPU (Average Revenue Per User) for the first quarter of 2026 increased by 18.4% to UAH 166.5 due to increased data consumption and tariff indexation, while the average number of minutes a subscriber uses per month (Mobile MoU) rose by 2.3% to 297.
