How companies prepared for winter: the experience of Kyivstar

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Last winter’s power outages had a particularly hard effect on mobile communications, which could only last a few hours at best. This year, the story of last year’s blackouts will most likely repeat itself.

This was repeatedly noted by both experts and relevant ministers. How is the infrastructure prepared for the corresponding military challenges and what will happen to the communication?

Preparing the mobile network for possible blackouts

Kyivstar started preparing for another difficult winter actually immediately after the situation in the energy system stabilized. The largest Ukrainian telecom operator, which is part of the Dutch VEON group, serves 24.1 million mobile subscribers and more than 1.1 million “Home Internet” subscribers.

During the whole year, he modernized and rebuilt his own telecom network in order to maintain communication even in the absence of electricity supply.

To ensure energy independence of services, Kyivstar invested 1 billion hryvnias in the development of its own infrastructure, of which 700 million hryvnias − in the energy source for the mobile communication network, and almost UAH 300 million – in the “Home Internet” network.

One of the priority tasks was the replacement of batteries at the base stations, as most of them had reduced energy consumption due to constant outages.

Kyivstar engineers have already updated about 100,000 batteries, and by the end of the year their number will increase to 110,000. More capacious batteries will ensure the operation of base stations without using power supply networks for at least 5 hours, and during fan outages they will be able to charge faster than previous models.

In addition, Kyivstar has increased the number of diesel generators, which ensure the operation of the critically important telecom network, from 700 to 2,200. This is three times more than at the beginning of the great war.

“Home Internet” under conditions of blackouts

“Home Internet” is also preparing to work under blackout conditions. The company’s investment in installing sources of uninterrupted power supply will allow more than 700,000 subscribers to access the Internet even during power outages.

Installation of uninterrupted power sources for “Home Internet” is ongoing in 44 cities of Ukraine. Kyiv, Kryvyi Rih, Dnipro, Zaporizhzhia and Lviv will be included in the list of the 5 most prepared cities by the amount of installed equipment.

In total, equipment is planned to be installed at more than 22,300 addresses for subscribers using “Home Internet” from Kyivstar. For this, 180 specialists work throughout Ukraine, who are involved in the process of installing, checking and testing equipment.

“Today, we live in a modern society that, after the start of the pandemic in 2020, began to choose a hybrid work schedule, that is, more and more people work from home.

That is why we understand that it is our mission to connect as many houses as possible to equipment that will provide subscribers with access to the Internet for a certain time, even in conditions of power outages.” − notes Serhiy Sukhoruk, head of the Fixed Communications Department of Kyivstar.

Development of the 4G network

Strengthening the stability of the telecom network and the development of broadband access is the main infrastructural task. This is emphasized in Kyivstar.

Despite the war, the company continues to increase the area covered by 4G communication so that high-speed mobile Internet services are available to the majority of Ukrainians. in particular, today 4G communication from Kyivstar is available to 94.7% of the population in the territory controlled by Ukraine, and the popularity of 4G among subscribers is confirmed by the increase in the use of mobile Internet services. In the next three years, Kyivstar plans to invest USD 600 million in the development of the telecom sector of Ukraine.

Capital expenditures (investments) of Kyivstar in 2023 – 3.8 billion UAH, in particular, during the 21 months of the Great War, the company connected more than 3.5 thousand settlements to 4G, and also provided 4G connection to almost 7,000 kilometers of roads of international importance and 5,345 kilometers – national.

Constant investments of Kyivstar in the development and maintenance of communications in Ukraine are a direct evidence of the company’s faith in the victory of the Ukrainian state.

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