Ukraine's stressed mobile providers prepare for more and longer power cuts

VEON

26/07/2024 12:16

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      Operators snap up generators and batteries to maintain
coverage
    

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      President orders review of mobile providers' activities
    

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      Operators advise clients to limit mobile usage during
blackouts
    

  
    By Olena  Harmash
       KYIV, July 26 (Reuters) - When Russia attacks Ukraine's
energy system, it not only knocks out electricity and running
water - but also, often, phone signals.
    Moscow's renewed assault on power grids and transmission
lines in the last three months has knocked out about half
Ukraine's available generation capacity, causing daily blackouts
of up to 12 hours in major cities including the capital Kyiv.
Once winter boosts energy use, the situation will only get
worse.
    As the big mobile operators struggle to keep their base
stations running, official pressure is growing; President
Volodymyr Zelenskiy has ordered a review of their activities and
the regulator says that, by February, they must be able to cover
an outage of up to 10 hours - rather than four, as now.
    All are rushing to buy more generators and batteries for
Ukraine's tens of thousands of stations but say that the longer
the blackout, the more complicated the job of maintaining full
coverage.
    Analysts say the review may reflect Zelenskiy's desire to
show that he understands the critical need for good
communication during challenging times, rather than any big
failings on the operators' part. But the review may also call
for further investments.
    Early in the war, the mobile providers set up national
roaming to switch calls to another operator if the subscriber's
one was unavailable.
    Now, despite the investments in resilience, they are
advising clients to limit usage and stick to simple
communications like text messages to save bandwidth when others
may have more pressing needs.
    "Maybe if you avoid watching TikTok during the blackout,
your neighbours will be able to call an ambulance in a critical
situation," Vodafone, one of three major mobile providers
contacted by Reuters, said in a message to users.
    
    BATTERIES AND GENERATORS HELP KEEP COMMUNICATIONS GOING
    The sector has already had to deal with a major cyber attack
as well as damage to its equipment during the war with Russia,
now nearly 30 months old.
    Three companies accounting for the majority of users -
Vodafone, Kyivstar and Lifecell - have planned to invest 2.7
billion hryvnias ($66 million) to mitigate the impact of Russian
drone and missile strikes on the power sector.
    They have already installed tens of thousands of new
accumulators and bought hundreds of generators to boost their
networks' resilience.
    Kostyantyn Sotnikov, who heads network maintenance at
Lifecell, said more than half its base stations across Ukraine
had been fitted with new lithium batteries since 2022, and
hundreds were being connected to generators.
    Two other operators - Kyivstar and Vodafone - said they had
made similar improvements.
    Kyivstar is the largest Ukrainian operator with about 24
million subscribers, and is owned by Amsterdam-listed Veon
 VON.AS .
    After spending over a billion hryvnias on network
resilience, it says it has more than 2,300 generators and plans
to buy another 848 soon.
    Vodafone Ukraine, the second biggest operator with about 16
million clients, said it planned to channel 438 million hryvnias
into energy equipment.

 (Reporting by Olena Harmash; Editing by Kevin Liffey)
 ((mailto:Olena.Harmash@thomsonreuters.com;))