By KYIV. Oct 31 (Interfax-Ukraine) – The Ministry of Digital Transformation of Ukraine plans to launch public Wi-Fi points in Ukraine that will operate on Tesla Powerwall batteries in case of power outage.
"We want to provide the country with reliable places for communication in any situation. In particular, we are considering the use of Tesla Powerwall, Starlink, so that such public communication points are in Ukraine and work regardless of the operation of the power grid. I do not know how many such access points will be. Now we are doing several test spots, will look at their work and scale up," Deputy Prime Minister, Minister of Digital Transformation Mykhailo Fedorov said in an interview with Forbes.
He noted that Ukraine, with the assistance of the Ministry of Digital Transformation, received more than 20,000 Starlink terminals. Of these, 15,000 are financed by international partners: the government of Poland, the ministers of digital transformation of the EU, USAID – both the terminals themselves and payment for communication services.
Now the ministry is in the process of receiving another 1,570 terminals from Polish colleagues – some of them are planned to be used to create public Wi-Fi points, some on the railway, and some on social infrastructure facilities and for the needs of the military.
"Now we are thinking about how to provide citizens with the most stable communication during power outages. Without electricity, both mobile communication towers and fixed Internet providers do not work in some regions. We understand what the position of each provider is, how many generators and batteries they buy, how we can help," Fedorov emphasized.
He also noted that public Wi-Fi spots will start working within the next month.
"We have little time to launch such projects for a long time. This week we will get a test point, check the work in the internal format, and then scale up," the official said.
