In 2020, Ukrtelecom provided 36 Epicenter shopping centers in different regions of the country with optical Internet.
According to the press service of the company, the network was provided with 100 Mbps Internet channels and PRI streams for a certain number of telephone numbers. This package of services meets the business needs of the shopping centers.
At present, Ukrtelecom is working on providing fast Internet for nine online order centers in Kyiv, Zaporizhia, Enerhodar (Zaporizhia region), Kharkiv, Dnipro, Odesa, Lviv, Ternopil, Horodok (Khmelnytsky region).
As the operator notes with reference to Epicenter, the network began to open modern order pick-up centers for the online store epicentrk.ua in 2020 in order to increase the level of customer service.
“The new order pick-up center are technological, with the automation of all processes, an address storage system for goods, a comfortable waiting area for customers with a children’s corner and online showcases. A high level of service in the centers for issuing orders, of course, requires fast and high-quality Internet,” the report says.
PJSC Ukrtelecom reduced EBITDA by 6.1% in January-March 2020 compared to the same period in 2019, to UAH 400 million, according to a press release released by the operator.
EBITDA margin for that period decreased by 0.5 percentage points (p.p.), to 25.5%, and net income by 5%, to UAH 1.6 billion.
Ukrtelecom said that the key positive factor influencing the company’s income is a steady increase in receipts from the provision of Internet services and data transfer.
“The revenues increased by 7%, to UAH 521 million in the first quarter of 2020 compared to last year. At the same time, the average traffic consumption by one Ukrtelecom home Internet subscriber grew by 25%, to almost 117 GB, and among users of optics to 235 GB, which is to some extent due to quarantine measures introduced in March,” the operator said in a statement.
In general, the income from telecommunications services of Ukrtelecom decreased by 7% in the first quarter of 2020 compared to UAH 1.3 billion in the first quarter of 2019.
According to the operator, that was significantly affected by a decrease in revenue from fixed telephony, which is a global tendency for voice services. Ukrtelecom revenue from the provision of this service in that period amounted to UAH 574 million, which is 20.9% less than in January-March 2019. The company also told Interfax-Ukraine that compared with the same period in 2019, the receivables of the government to the operator for providing services to privileged categories of the population increased by 8%, to UAH 144 million.
Capital investments amounted to UAH 112 million for the first quarter of 2020.
“Strictly observing measures to prevent the spread of [coronavirus] COVID-19 in Ukraine, Ukrtelecom continues to implement a number of projects to develop an optical infrastructure that can reduce the digital divide in the country. The operator is expanding the geography of optics by connecting small towns and social facilities to the high-speed Internet,” the operator said.
In the first three months of 2020, Ukrtelecom laid almost 1,400 kilometers of fiber-optic cable and connected to the optical Internet about 100 medical and educational institutions, as well as 39 merged territorial communities. The Internet access network of Ukrtelecom covered 2,430 cities and villages of Ukraine for the first quarter of 2020.
Revenues from the commercial lease of property, which is not involved in production, increased by 24% compared to the first quarter of 2019 and amounted to UAH 87.5 million. Ukrtelecom transferred UAH 478 million in taxes to budgets of all levels in January-March of 2020. The company refused to disclose the net financial result for the first quarter.
Ukrtelecom together with Iskratel, the Slovenian telecommunications company, and SID Bank, the Slovenian development bank, signed a new agreement on the development of fiber-optic Internet networks (GPON) in rural zone of Ukraine, Ukrtelecom said on Monday, Mach 23.
According to the company, the new project is designed for two years and includes more than 200 settlements in 13 regions of Ukraine. Total investments in the network construction project will amount to about UAH 200 million.
“The new project is the continuation of a long-term cooperation between Ukrtelecom and Iskratel in the development of high-speed optical access networks. Within its implementation, more than 2,000 kilometers of fiber-optic communication lines will be laid and modern switching equipment assembled in Slovenia at Iskratel production centers will be installed,” reads the statement.
According to Ukrtelecom, as a result of new network construction, hundreds of thousands people of the villages of Vinnytsia, Khmelnytsky, Dnipropetrovsk, Zaporizhia, Odesa, Poltava, Mykolaiv, Sumy, Rivne, Kherson, Kharkiv, Cherkasy and Luhansk regions will get access to the Internet at speeds to 1 Gbps, to digital interactive television and other services of the company. This type of connection will allow communities to implement the full range of digital services.
The project includes settlements in most of which it was previously not possible to connect to wire Internet.
“Ukrtelecom as a national infrastructure telecoms operator of Ukraine has a unique opportunity to involve European financial and production partners in programs to bridge the digital divide in Ukraine,” Yuriy Kurmaz, the director of the company, said.
At this stage, the construction of the network is conducted according to the plan, namely work has begun in Kharkiv region.
The company said that the situation with the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic did not affect the planned work.
PJSC Ukrtelecom cut its net income by 1.4%, to UAH 6.357 billion in 2019, the company’s CEO Yuriy Kurmaz said at a press conference in Kyiv.
According to him, the revenue is expected at the level of 2019 amounting to about half a million hryvnia, but this figure will be announced only after the financial audit of the company.
At the same time, EBITDA increased by 9.4%, to UAH 1.766 million, EBITDA margin – by 2.8 percentage points (p.p.), to 27.8% compared to 2018.
The company’s capital investments grew by 14.6%, to UAH 692 million.
In the total amount of income, revenues from telecoms services amounted to UAH 5.288 billion (a decrease of 4.1% from 2018), while total revenues from providing Internet access and data transmission services continue growing – by 6.2%, to UAH 1.949 billion, revenues from telephony continue declining – by 9.1%, to UAH 2.56 billion.
In 2019, Ukrtelecom served 2.3 million fixed-line subscribers, 1.04 million Internet access subscribers, and 78,000 television subscribers in the B2C segment. Revenues from telephony in this segment decreased by 10.9%, to UAH 1.865 billion, those from Internet access services grew by 6.2%, to UAH 1.372 billion.
According to the results of 2019, the operator in the B2B segment serviced 790,000 fixed-line telephony subscribers with an average revenue per user (ARPU) of UAH 70 without VAT (UAH 68 in 2018), and 150,000 subscribers of the Internet access service with an average ARPU of UAH 198 (UAH 175 in 2018).
The EBITDA of Ukrtelecom (Kyiv) in January-June 2019 exceeded UAH 919 million, which is 10.8% more than a year ago, the largest Ukrainian fixed-line telephony operator has said.
According to the report, for the reporting period the total income of Ukrtelecom remained stable at the level of almost UAH 3.3 billion against UAH 3.249 billion for the same period last year, in particular income from telecommunications services amounted to UAH 2.755 billion.
Ukrtelecom notes that in January-June of this year it managed to increase revenue from Internet services by 8.2%, to more than UAH 880 million by continuing to deploy optics (plus 1,400 km since the beginning of the year) and connecting territorial communities to the Internet.
The company said that in the business segment, sales of Internet services increased by 8.6%, to UAH 184 million, and among private users by 8.1%, to UAH 698 million. According to the report, today the company offers Internet services in almost 2,300 locations in Ukraine.
Ukrtelecom said in the second quarter it launched a large project on laying more than 3,500 km of fiber-optic lines to provide nearly 300 small towns and villages with optical Internet.
Compared to the first half of 2018, revenues from fixed telephony decreased in the mass segment by 6.5%, in the corporate segment by 1.6%, and in general amounted to almost UAH 1.385 billion, which corresponds to the similar trend of decreasing voice services revenues from mobile operators.
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.
