Miscellaneous

Communications in Ukraine - rolling blackouts of operators, flight from the country

Hello.

Getting information from Ukraine has become very difficult. People who have known us for many years in our industry write

something like this:“For the fact of correspondence with you, they can kill me. You'll be lucky if they just cripple you." It is difficult for us to understand people who have fallen into an atmosphere of fear and intimidation, which is not an imaginary threat. I ask everyone with whom I communicate to behave with the utmost care and measure the risks, use communication channels that will not make it possible to reveal a person’s identity. Laughter and sin, since you have to figure out how people you know will write from other accounts that are not associated with them in any way.

For example, Kyivstar employees talk aboutIn the atmosphere of propaganda pumping inside the company, in corporate correspondence, not only Russian speech as such, but even individual words are now eradicated, they agree on how to designate certain terms. Under the conditions of rolling blackouts, the IT infrastructure of Kyivstar, like that of other operators, begins to crumble, it is not designed to work in such conditions, the equipment is worn out and there is not enough of it, there are few spare parts kits. The government of Ukraine turned to European countries with a request to supply batteries, diesel generators, some of them are needed for cellular networks. The shortage of diesel generators in the same "Kyivstar" amounts to thousands of pieces, the company does not have money to purchase them.

Attacks on the infrastructure of Ukraine continue, theyreduce the possibility of providing the population with both light and communications. Let's take a look at Kyivstar's financials for the third quarter so that we can talk about what's going on with the numbers later.

User base shrinks in Q3by 7 percent, the outflow is shown to be minimal (refugees in Europe remain customers of the company, roaming in thirty countries until the end of the year is free for them). At the same time, people living in new Russian regions (up to ten million people, of which about 3.5 million are Kyivstar subscribers) are not taken into account. The reporting does not show that people have fallen off, so you need to take these numbers with skepticism.

Note that the average volumeof transmitted data is 9 GB per person (in Russia in the third quarter 16 GB). Growth year on year by almost a third, this is due to the fact that often the mobile Internet remains the only way to communicate when home networks do not work.

The problem is that mobile internet is alsostops working when there is a power outage, since spare batteries can provide several hours of operation, communication deteriorates. Read the text about the degradation of communication in such conditions, it describes how it works.

Operation of cellular networks and Internet providers on batteries

What happens during rolling blackouts, how mobile networks work, how long the connection lasts and what problems operators face. Ukraine, Europe, Russia.

In Kyiv, Kyivstar subscribers cannot receivemobile Internet 24/7, as before, it all depends on the area. There are areas where there is no connection for a total of five to six hours a day (there is no mobile Internet, there are voice calls). In recent days, traffic in certain segments from subscribers to the operator has fallen by 45-55%, the reason is the inability to receive the service.

If we talk about areas where there are militaryactions, there cell towers have become targets from both sides, they are systematically destroyed. The average cost of only network restoration during the quarter is estimated at $20 million, the operator does not have such investments, and they have nowhere to come from. Kyivstar will shrink like pebbled skin, shrink to the point of impossibility. Losses of subscribers, multiplied by the destruction of the network, lack of effective demand.

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Curious number of those who use the services"Kyivstar" outside Ukraine, today it is 1.7 million active SIM-cards. Moreover, at their peak there were 2.2 million, but, apparently, they keep one SIM card per family so as not to incur additional costs. Most of the half a million SIM cards have been turned off, their owners no longer turn them on (I emphasize that this is outside of Ukraine). If you try to estimate the losses of Ukraine on the battlefield, then the statistics here look tricky - turning off the phone does not necessarily mean death, a person can be captured, lose or break the phone. Let me remind you that Kyivstar is the largest operator in Ukraine, followed by Vodafone and Lifecell by a wide margin.

From March to early November in areas where they gohostilities, about 1.1 million Kyivstar SIM-cards appeared (the guys did not count the SIM-cards that were originally assigned to these areas). About 700,000 SIM-cards have disappeared from the Kyivstar network, which does not mean anything yet. But if you look at the IMEI numbers, then 65 thousand phones no longer returned to the network. I will not interpret these data in any way, just numbers around which various hypotheses can be built.

Inside the "Kyivstar" built an economicmodel, in the most optimistic scenario, network connectivity between different regions will be disrupted as early as early 2023. Without investments of $12 million per month, the network will not be able to operate as before. Requesting money from Veon is useless, holding will not finance a market where there are no prospects and losses are inevitable. There is a certain irony, Veon is losing not only Russia, but also Ukraine - the holding begins to fall apart before our eyes.

The state of telecom in Ukraine is deplorable, the lack of electricity makes the situation even worse. Look at the photos of how the equipment of one of the broadband providers works, it's a tricky thing to make up.

Source: t.me/ponKabzdec

It is expected that in the near futurethe evacuation of several million people from Kyiv will begin, since it is almost impossible to ensure the operation of the city's infrastructure. Starlink remains the only working connection for Ukraine. But Musk's company has begun to turn off the terminals, so out of 4,000 that work in the army, 1,300 are already turned off (they are not paid). Maintenance of each terminal costs $5,000 a month, which means the army needs $20 million. There is no such money in Ukraine, so support will be gradually phased out, step by step Starlink will leave. It is important to understand that $5,000 per terminal is still a loss for Starlink, since the traffic passing through one station is much higher than calculated. In fact, Starlink has replaced all communications, both military and civilian. But the period of shareware assistance has come to an end.

The icing on the cake is development insideUkrainian operators of plans to sell part of the equipment to neighboring countries - in fact, they are preparing for the fact that Ukraine will cease to exist as a country, which means that communications will not be needed. This means that the requests for the restoration of networks are imaginary, and there will be nowhere to get money from.

It's a matter of time when small providersrealize the finiteness of history and act in the same way as the big players. So far, the plan looks like this: work while there are some preferences and money, then sell everything that can be sold and leave for European countries, leaving most of the companies to die on the ground. They won’t take everyone with them, since there are enough resources for life somewhere for dozens of people, and not for all the teams that work in the industry.

Rolling blackouts also affectedon activity on the network, the Ukrainian point of view began to sag (Poland, the Baltic states are working, but in Ukraine itself such work has stopped - oh, I feel that they will immediately try to prove the opposite to me, but what to do, facts are a stubborn thing).

Operation of cellular networks and Internet providers on batteries

What happens during rolling blackouts, how mobile networks work, how long the connection lasts and what problems operators face. Ukraine, Europe, Russia.

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