In January 2021, Ukrainian mobile operators connected 2,383 settlements to high-speed mobile Internet, of which 4G appeared for the first time in 543 cities and villages, where about 117,400 citizens live, Deputy Prime Minister, Minister of Digital Transformation of Ukraine Mykhailo Fedorov said.
“More than 7 million Ukrainians from 11,800 settlements received access to 4G due to the implementation of the LTE 900 project, which started in July 2020. At the same time, more than 2 million Ukrainians in 5,600 cities and villages received access to 4G for the first time,” he wrote on Facebook.
According to Fedorov, the Digital Transformation Ministry is to provide 95% of Ukrainians with Internet access.
Currently, high-speed mobile Internet is available in 22,000 settlements of Ukraine.
The relaxation of the rules of connecting to power grids would allow Ukraine to climb in the Doing Business rating from 64th position to the top 30, Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal has said.
“In 2012, we started from one hundred and fiftieths positions, then we gradually moved to 71st, and today we are in the 64th position in the world among almost 190 countries. Our goal is the top 30,” he said in an exclusive interview with Interfax-Ukraine.
As the prime minister said, this is not about status, but about specific indicators that are important for investors.
“Today, they say that Ukraine is very good for investment, but just a few parameters bother them. The key parameter is the connection to the power grid. We are between 120 and 130 places in terms of connection to the power grid. If we improve this indicator, then automatically, without other efforts, we enter the top 30 of the overall rating,” Shmyhal said.
He said that this would mean that regional competition with neighboring countries of Poland, Hungary, and Romania is won.
Ukrtelecom in July plans to connect residents of 65 localities to broadband Internet as part of the implementation of the project to develop the optical network using GPON technology. The first connections under the project for the development of the optical network in 300 small localities started a month and a half earlier than planned, according to the operator’s website.
“At the first stage, works on the construction of the optical network are carried out in 16 regions: Zaporizhia, Volyn, Ivano-Frankivsk, Rivne, Khmelnytsky, Chernivtsi, Mykolaiv, Odesa, Kherson, Poltava, Sumy, Kharkiv, Vinnytsia, Zhytomyr, Cherkasy and Chernihiv, where already 40% of the network has been laid, which is more than 220 kilometers. By the end of July, it is planned to build almost 600 km of the optical network in total,” the operator said.
According to the plans of Ukrtelecom, thousands of residents of 65 localities after connecting to the service will be able to receive Internet at speeds up to 200 Mbit per second, as well as use additional teleservices, in particular, Internet telephony and interactive television.
The company said that in 26 of the 65 localities connected, there was still no Internet.
Poland is ready to launch a gas pipeline with a transmission capacity of 2 billion cubic meters, which will connect the Polish gas transmission system (GTS) with the Ukrainian one in Hermanowice (Poland), the zn.ua (Mirror Weekly) ezine reported on Thursday.
“We are ready to launch the gas pipeline, if necessary, which will connect the Polish system with the Ukrainian one in Hermanowice. Its capacity is 2 billion cubic meters. This is not much, but when Ukrainians need urgent help, we are ready to provide it,” the publication said, quoting a representative of the Polish government for the strategic energy infrastructure Piotr Naimski.
He also said that Poland is waiting for a decision from the Ukrainian side.
Public joint-stock company Ukrtelecom has designed a project to connect remote settlements to the broadband Internet access service, which could cover 8,000 villages where 6 million residents are living, during two years, Director for Mass Market Segment at Ukrtelecom Denys Zakharenko said at the presentation of the project in Kyiv on Monday. The total cost of the project is UAH 6 billion, including UAH 3.2 billion (53.3%) of government investment.
He said that all villages with schools (6,900) and villages located close to them with over 100 households will be included in the project.
Ukrtelecom said that mass connection would ensure the coverage of 40% of the total number of rural residents in Ukraine with the broadband Internet access service, which would cut the gap between cities and small towns and villages by 75%, as the share of rural areas in Ukraine where the service is not provided would decline from 56% to 16%, from 8.3 million to 2.3 million people.
According to the calculations of the operator, some 58,000 km of networks should be built to cover 8,000 villages.
The operator said that 14,000 villages are not covered by the project. A total of 2.3 million residents live there. This could be a ground for the second wave of connections.
Thanks to the implementation of the project, broadband Internet access saturation in Ukraine would grow by 4.4%, and GDP would grow by 0.6%, which in the prices of 2018 is around UAH 20 billion. Growth of the national budget’s revenue could be UAH 5.4 billion.
Zakharenko said that the buyback period for government investment could be two years thanks to the increase in payment of taxes.
Ukrtelecom Director Yuriy Kurmaz said that the project will be presented to the government and parliament.
