Subscribers of the Kyivstar mobile operator with the “Roaming like at home” tariff used 5.256 GB of mobile Internet on average in July and called in roaming for 191 minutes, the company said in a press release.
According to its data, customers of the standard roaming tariff download an average of 201 MB of data per month and talk for 9 minutes, which is 26 and 21 times less than the indicators of the “Roaming like at home” tariff, respectively.
Kyivstar clarified that in general, during the three months of providing the “Roaming like at home” service, the company’s subscribers used almost 32 million GB of mobile Internet and talked at this rate for about 117 million minutes.
As reported earlier, the operators of Ukraine and the EU signed a joint declaration on coordinated efforts to ensure and stabilize affordable or free roaming and international calls between the EU and Ukraine. Kyivstar plans to maintain this service at least until the end of this year.
As Kyivstar President Alexander Komarov recently pointed out in an interview with Interfax-Ukraine, in July the company had about 1.3-1.4 million customers in roaming, and 80-90% used the “Roaming like at home” service, which provided in 30 countries around the world.
Kyivstar in the II quarter of 2022 reduced EBITDA by 4.8% with revenue growth of 3.9% (in dollars – by 2%) compared to the same period in 2021 – to UAH 7.37 billion.
Kyivstar is the largest Ukrainian telecommunications operator. Provides communication and data transmission services based on a wide range of mobile and fixed technologies, including 3G. As of the middle of this year, its services were used by about 24.8 million mobile subscribers and over 1 million fixed Internet customers.
Kyivstar’s shareholder is the international group VEON (formerly VimpelCom Ltd.). The group’s shares are listed on the NASDAQ (New York) stock exchange.
The VEON international telecommunications holding, which is the parent company of the Ukrainian mobile operator Kyivstar, recorded a 10.8% increase in revenue in Ukraine in national currency over the first five months of 2022.
According to a VEON press release published by PRNewswire on June 29, 2022, EBITDA decreased by 0.2% in five months (in local currency).
Kyivstar is the largest Ukrainian telecommunications operator. It provides communication and data transmission services based on a wide range of mobile and fixed technologies, including 4G.
Kyivstar’s shareholder is the international group VEON (formerly VimpelCom Ltd.). The group’s shares are listed on the NASDAQ (New York) stock exchange.
Since the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the Kyivstar mobile operator has paid UAH 4.246 billion in taxes and fees to the state budget, including UAH 1.682 billion ahead of schedule, the company’s press service said on Tuesday.
According to the operator, today Kyivstar has connected more than 1,200 bomb shelters in different cities of the country to free wired Internet, and also transmitted more than 300 million State Emergency Service messages with vital information to the population.
In addition, the company transferred over UAH 33 million to the humanitarian needs of the military, hospitals, the elderly and those affected by the war. The operator’s subscribers, using short numbers and the Smart Money service, transferred more than UAH 3.2 million for humanitarian needs of hospitals and the military, the press service clarifies.
“More than 90% of the company’s network functions stably and provides subscribers with communication and high-speed Internet services. To do this, in the first quarter of 2022, the operator invested UAH 659 million in the development of communications. During the hostilities, the company built 110 new mobile communication facilities and improved 4G communications in 3,500 settlements,” the report says.
According to the operator, during the war, the company’s subscribers were provided with free services worth UAH 429 million. Subscribers in 30 countries of the world receive communication services at the same tariffs as in Ukraine.
In addition, Kyivstar provides doctors working in risk areas with free mobile communications.
The Kyivstar mobile operator since February 2022 has upgraded 3,000 base stations in small towns and villages with a population of up to 2,000 people by connecting LTE-900 technology to them, the company’s press service reported on Monday.
“Thanks to this, the network capacity has been increased and the quality of 4G has been improved in 3,500 settlements in 19 regions of Ukraine. Among them are Vinnytsia, Dnipropetrovsk, Zhytomyr, Zakarpattia, Ivano-Frankivsk, Kyiv, Lviv, Odesa, Poltava, Sumy and other regions of Ukraine where no active hostilities are taking place,” the statement said.
The operator notes that also in 2022, some 140 new base stations were built. And to improve the quality of communication in regions of intensive data traffic, the development of frequencies in the 2300 MHz range, received from the state for the period of wartime in the country, began.
According to Kyivstar, since the beginning of the war, almost 5 million of the company’s subscribers have moved from large cities to small towns within their region, and another 4 million have moved from other regions to the western regions of Ukraine. In this regard, the operator increases the network capacity and improves the quality of radio coverage in places where Internet traffic is growing.
“Since the outbreak of hostilities, the telecom operator’s specialists have eliminated thousands of emergencies that arose as a result of damage to the telecommunications infrastructure, replaced almost 30,000 meters of destroyed fiber-optic lines, carried out 3,500 repairs on cell towers. More than 90% of the telecom infrastructure is operating normally, providing communications and high-speed Internet for the needs of subscribers, the public sector and private companies,” the company said.
In 2022, the Kyivstar mobile operator built 108 new base stations to improve the quality of communication.
As the company’s press service reported on Friday, in the first quarter of 2022, Kyivstar invested UAH 659 million in construction and development of a mobile communication network in Ukraine, thanks to which the company’s telecom network works stably.
In January-May 2022, the operator built 108 new mobile base stations. In particular, 53 base stations were built in cities in the west of Ukraine, 27 base stations – in Vinnytsia, Zhytomyr, Kyiv and Cherkasy regions. In the east of Ukraine, 20 base stations were built, most of them in Kharkiv region. Eight new base stations were installed in the south of Ukraine.
“Thanks to the network expansion, the company can better provide communications in those regions where there is an increase in traffic. For example, almost 5 million subscribers who were in large cities before the war moved to rural areas within their regions. And about 4 million subscribers moved to other regions, mainly to the west of Ukraine,” the report says.
In addition, as noted, during the hostilities, Kyivstar specialists eliminated tens of thousands of emergency situations that arose as a result of damage to the telecommunications infrastructure.
Currently, 95% of the company’s telecom infrastructure is operating normally, providing mobile communications and high-speed Internet for 26 million subscribers.
“We can confirm that there is a trend for Ukrainians to return home. We really see all the migration, we see all countries. Today, according to the Kyivstar database, Poland has accepted 35% of Ukrainians who have left the country, Germany – 15%, the Czech Republic – 7%, Italy – 5%, Moldova and Romania – 2% each, that is, these are the list of the top countries where Kyivstar customers went,” Kyivstar President Oleksandr Komarov said in an interview with Interfax-Ukraine.
He also said that according to the operator, there are about 8.7 million internally displaced persons in Ukraine.
“These are two types of migration: from big cities to towns and from east to west. Approximately 4 million people have moved to other areas of the country, others have moved from cities to villages within their regions. The internal migration of such a large number of people is a technical challenge for mobile networks,” Komarov said.
According to him, today the average speed of mobile Internet in the Kyivstar network has fallen from about 38 Mbps to 28 Mbps due to the fact that almost 5 million subscribers have left the cities for the countryside.
“From territories where mobile data transmission is available in the 1800MHz and 2600MHz bands, they went to where LTE-900 technology works, which has a lower capacity. And this is the reason that we are now rethinking our plan to build new base stations for this year. For example, in areas with strong growth in subscribers, we plan to move from LTE-900 to LTE-1800, it is possible to increase it up to 2600 MHz somewhere,” the president of the operator said.
He also said that the operator focuses on the subscriber migration data in terms of network development. In particular, the changes affected plans to build a gigabit network.
If earlier the operator focused in this part mainly on large cities, then during the war, the construction of a gigabit network in Lviv was completed in the first place, and it is also planned to expand other sections of the network in Western Ukraine.
As reported, specialists of the Kyivstar mobile network operator in the two months of the war eliminated more than 48,000 accidents in the physical and digital infrastructure of the network, and also replaced almost 25,000 meters of optical fiber.
