Kyivstar, Ukraine’s largest mobile operator, will build 170 and upgrade more than 1,000 base stations in the first quarter of 2023, this work is largely due to significant migration to cities and villages in the west of the country, company president Alexander Komarov said in Facebook on Tuesday.
“The level of availability of the network “Kyivstar” in the free territory of Ukraine is more than 99%. This corresponds to the level until February 24, 2022. Nevertheless, there are difficulties in maintaining this quality of communication, the solution of which we are actively working on, “- said the head of the company.
According to him, from time to time the company has difficulties with maintaining an appropriate level of network availability because of bad weather and related warning blackouts, and sometimes the difficulties are caused by security issues, irresponsible attitude of landlords and problems getting access to the network.
Komarov pointed out that Kyivstar does not reduce the rate of battery replacement and connection of new generators, bringing the total number of the latter to about 1,900, as the threat of blackouts remains, and the current improved situation with power supply is a seasonal phenomenon associated with the successful actions of the air defense and a surplus in generation.
The head of the company also said that in the Kharkiv and decouped territories of the Kherson region, grid restoration work is in its final stage.
As reported, in 2022 Kyivstar built 659 new base stations, which roughly corresponds to the level of 2021. In total, the company has about 14 thousand base stations and other network facilities.
Komarov said at Business Wisdom Summit on March 15 that Kyivstar installed 1,790 generators, of which 700 were provided by the business on crowdfunding terms. Their total capacity reached 40 MW.
Ukraine’s largest mobile operator Kyivstar has joined the National Bank of Ukraine’s (NBU) BankID electronic remote identification system for individuals, the bank’s press service said on Friday.
“Another large mobile operator, Kyivstar, has joined the NBU’s BankID system. Now, using BankID NBU system, Kyivstar prepaid subscribers in mobile application “My Kyivstar” will be able to pass identification for switching to a contract form of service,” – explains the report.
Switching to contract form of service or mobile number registration is the most effective protection of subscriber’s SIM-card from fraud, the NBU pointed out.
Now NBU BankID System is used by all three major mobile operators in Ukraine: in April 2021 Lifecell Ukraine and in April 2022 Vodafone Ukraine joined to it.
As reported, BankID NBU provides access to services of more than 40 state and public institutions, allows users to be verified remotely to gain remote access to financial, administrative and commercial services.
As of April 14, 2022 the BankID NBU System had 40 BankIDs, including PrivatBank, Ukrgasbank, Ukrsibbank, Ukreximbank, Alliance Bank, Forward Bank, PUMB, Oschadbank, Alfa-Bank, OTP Bank, Accordbank, Globus Bank, Piraeus Bank, Pravex Bank, Raiffeisen Bank Aval, TAScombank, Kristallbank (all – Kyiv), Motor Bank (Zaporizhia), Vostok, Radabank, Concord Bank, A-Bank (all – Dnipro), Credobank, Idea Bank, Lviv Bank (all – Lviv), Pivdenny Bank (Odessa), MTB Bank (Odessa obl. ), Asvio Bank (Chernihiv), as well as virtual monobank and izibank.
Additional expenses of the largest Ukrainian mobile operator Kyivstar on ensuring its energy independence amid the problems with external energy supply exceeded UAH 350 mln and the company has replaced more than 20 thousand batteries at base stations to extend their autonomous operation up to four to six hours.
Alexander Komarov, the President of the Company, informed at Business Wisdom Summit held this week that the batteries have been already replaced at 2 ths sites (base stations and other facilities) out of 14 ths and by May-June it will be up to 5 ths but the company goes to the Board of Directors with the proposal to expand this program by 4 ths more.
Earlier the president of the company noted that consumption of one base station is 6-7 kWh. New modern lithium-phosphate batteries allow not only to keep voltage longer but also to recharge faster.
He added that Kyivstar also installed 1,790 generators, of which 700 were provided by businesses on crowdfunding terms. Their total capacity reached 40 MW.
Komarov specified that since November the company uses on average about 10 thousand liters of fuel per day, and the total consumption has already made about 1 million liters.
According to him, to cope with the problems of outages also helps national roaming: in the peak day on November 23 Kyivstar took 1 million subscribers of other operators, while 1,3 million subscribers of Kyivstar used networks of competitors. In total, during the operation of national roaming since March 7, 2022 subscribers of other networks spoke in Kyivstar network 1.2 billion minutes.
In addition, the company also invested UAH 50 million in uninterruptible power supplies for “Home Internet” services: more than 10 thousand homes were equipped with uninterruptible power supplies, which guarantees them the availability of the Internet, even in cases of new blackouts.
Komarov specified that the total investment in the development of telcom-services in the past year amounted to 5.9 billion UAH, 659 new base stations were built, which corresponds to the level of 2021.
He reminded that during the war 18% of base stations of the company were completely destroyed, 20% were damaged and more than 1200 km of fiber-optic lines were damaged as well.
According to him, the company now has 24.8 million subscribers, of which 3.3 million are internally displaced. Komarov specified that 2.2 million subscribers went abroad, 1.4 million of them remained the company’s subscribers, including 95 % that use the service “roaming as home”, provided in 27 countries.
The president of “Kyivstar” noted that at the beginning of the war there were 10 million subscribers of the company outside their places of residence.
“The industry and Kyivstar have done very decently: the network indicators are very close to the pre-war period, the energy industry has stabilized, and the network has stabilized,” Komarov summarized.
Ukraine’s largest mobile operator “Kyivstar” in a year of war paid 10.7 billion UAH of taxes and invested in technological development of 3.5 billion UAH, the president of the company, Alexander Komarov said on Facebook.
The second largest operator “Vodafone Ukraine” reported paying 4.97 billion UAH of taxes and fees in 2022 and almost 4 billion UAH of investments in support and development of telecom infrastructure in Ukraine.
“92% of the network is working as usual today. This is an incredible result, given that 8% are in the occupied territories. At the same time we returned connection to 815 settlements, where we built more than 600 base stations (BS). More 700 new base stations of 4G standard were built, which increased the 4G coverage by 20%”, – wrote Komarov.
He added that the generating capacity of Kyivstar reached 39.2 MW thanks to increase of the number of diesel generators by 75% and installation of 18 thousand new batteries.
“As of today 88% of the network in the country is working in normal mode” – stated “Vodafone Ukraine”.
According to the company, 581 base stations were resumed and 2.9 thousand km of fiber-optic cable were repaired, thanks to which it was possible to restore the availability of services to people in 759 settlements of the country.
“Vodafone Ukraine” also reported that 723 base stations were launched in new locations, 414 additional mobile generators were purchased and 24.71 thousand batteries were replaced.
Investments by Ukraine’s largest mobile operator Kyivstar in alternative power supply exceeded UAH 350 million, the company said on Tuesday.
According to the report, the company increased by 75% the number of generators for alternative power supply of base stations, as well as installed more than 18 thousand batteries of a new type with a longer service life.
The release also says that since February 2022 Kyivstar’s specialists have renewed more than 7 thousand base stations and built 700 new base stations for 4G network operation, due to which the territory of the company’s 4G network operation has increased by 6-20% depending on the region.
The operator recalled that during the war about 18% of base stations of the company’s mobile communications were significantly damaged, but thanks to early backup of additional communication channels, the transfer of nodal base stations to the remote from the frontline cities, almost 90% of Kyivstar telecom network is now in working order.
According to the report, since the beginning of the war, Kyivstar specialists restored 600 base stations, replaced 1.2 thousand km of damaged fibre-optic cable, eliminated 140 thousand emergency situations on the infrastructure and returned mobile communications to 815 settlements.
As reported, in early January 2023 Kyivstar announced its plans to increase the number of stationary and mobile diesel generators at other sites of the network by 40% to 14 MW.
Earlier, in December 2022 Yurii Matsyk, director of the department of fixed-line Internet development of the Ministry of Ukraine, noted that only 7% of 32 thousand mobile stations are equipped with generators and 93% – with accumulators. According to him, generators with a capacity of 20-30 kW are needed for the communication node, where there is traffic switching. For the base station – 6-8 kW.
Ukraine’s largest mobile operator Kyivstar together with its partners has installed generators in 50 branded stores, in the coming months the number of standalone stores will reach 100, the operator’s press service said.
“To date, the company has already invested more than 350 million UAH to provide the network of base stations with powerful batteries, as well as stationary and mobile diesel generators. More than UAH 5.5 million were allocated to compensate our partners for purchasing generators in stores to provide our customers with constant access to services”, – the press service quotes Kyivstar head of retail sales channels Mykhailo Mykolyuk as saying.
As reported, earlier Kyivstar invested more than UAH 50 million in the purchase of uninterruptible power supplies to support “Home Internet” service to 10 thousand homes and 90 thousand subscribers to stay connected even during power outages.
The shareholder of Kyivstar is an international group VEON, which is headquartered in the Netherlands. The group’s shares are traded on the NASDAQ (New York) and Euronext (Amsterdam) stock exchanges.
