By KYIV. Nov 1 (Interfax-Ukraine) – The largest mobile operator in Ukraine, Kyivstar, said that 70% of its network is stable under short-term, up to three to four hours, power outages.
“You need to separate short blackouts into three to four hours. This is probably 70-90% of the problems, if we are talking about the frequency of the problem, and not about the depth. Almost 70% of the network is completely reserved. These are the segments of fixed and mobile communications… from this class blackouts,” said Kyivstar President Oleksandr Komarov at Business Breakfast.
According to him, the company’s network proved its resilience during numerous power failures due to hurricane winds and bad weather last Saturday, October 28.
“On average, for each region, out of 100 conditional sites (technological sites on which base stations are located), 70-80 continued to work (in conditions of outages),” Komarov said.
He pointed out that new lithium phosphate batteries performed well in bad weather situations.
“Lithium phosphate batteries worked very well. Even better than we expected. We have sites that lasted five to six hours on such batteries. A very decent result,” says Komarov.
He clarified that approximately 2,200 generators are currently operating on the Kyivstar network.
Earlier it was reported that the investments of the largest Ukrainian mobile operator Kyivstar in energy independence amounted to UAH 920 million for the entire period of the full-scale invasion of the Russian Federation. In particular, Kyivstar allocated more than UAH 680 million for autonomous operation of mobile communications, and UAH 240 million for Home Internet.
The company uses more than 2,500 stationary and mobile diesel generators, thanks to which all key base stations, switches and critical telecom equipment have backup power. The base stations are equipped with 37,000 new long-life batteries that can operate without external power for four to six hours.
Kyivstar plans to install 50,000 uninterruptible power units by the end of the year, which will allow 70% of fixed Internet networks to achieve autonomy in the event of power outages.
The company is also developing energy-efficient GPON technology.
Kyivstar communication services are currently used by 24 million subscribers, and Home Internet services by more than 1 million subscribers.
