Press Release
Ukraine’s leading broadband and ICT provider Ukrtelecom is planning to bridge the country’s digital divide by rolling out ultrafast broadband to 2.6 million people living in rural areas, over the next two and a half years.
This news comes as a response to Ukraine’s Ministry of Digital Transformation, which on Thursday (30th July) announced a four-year target to provide Ukraine’s rural community with access to high speed broadband internet, with minimum speeds of 100megabits per second.
Only 65% of rural Ukraine currently has broadband access, but by working with the telecommunications industry the Government plans to increase broadband availability to 95% of Ukraine’s rural population.
"Through an open public-private partnership, Ukrtelecom stands ready to help the government to roll out fibre internet in rural areas,” says Ukrtelecom’s CEO, Yuri Kurmaz.
As of today, more than 16,000 educational institutions and over 8,000 medical facilities in Ukraine do not have access to a fibre optic internet connection. The government plans to allocate $197m (£150m) to the telecoms industry to connect them. In turn, this will help connect up the wider nearby communities.
In order to do this Ukrtelecom proposes a two-stage approach:
In phase one, Ukrtelecom estimates that it will cost $110m (£84m) for it to roll out broadband to 2.6m people in rural areas. The company proposes that this comprises of $51m, which it hopes the Government will allocate from its recently announced $197m programme. Ukrtelecom plans to raise the balance of $59m in cooperation with international vendors and/or financial partners.
As a result of the first stage of Ukrtelecom’s plans, internet coverage for Ukraine’s rural population will jump from 65% at present to 85% within the next 2.5 years. It will require the building and rolling out of a 23,000km fibre backbone and 26,000km of access network across 3,900 villages. These relatively large villages with educational and/or medical facilities have on average 200 households and a total population 2.6m.
The second stage will bring coverage to the remaining 10% of the population in the Government’s plan by providing fibre connectivity to another 8k smaller villages, taking it to its targeted goal of 95%. Ukrtelecom will announce further plans for phase two in due course.
Yuri Kurmaz said: “The recent Covid-19 outbreak has shown that it’s vital for all of Ukraine to be digitally connected. By bringing ultrafast broadband to rural parts of the country we want to support the digital transformation of government services, education and agriculture, as well as the wider economy.”
Earlier this year, in March 2020, Ukrtelecom announced it had signed an agreement with leading European ICT provider Iskratel and SID Banka to connect rural areas of Ukraine using GPON fibre-optic networks.
The two-year network construction project with total investment of ?$6.2m will provide a fibre internet connection to 200 villages in 13 Ukrainian regions. The project is providing coverage to 250,000 people. So far, the new network has already passed 200,000 people in 180 villages.
