Kyivstar estimates approximate dates for the start of 5G implementation

[zakiyatasnim]

Mobile operator Kyivstar held a meeting with journalists under the intriguing title "What will telecom be like tomorrow?", where it spoke about the current situation in the industry and the prospects for the implementation of new communication technologies.



About Unloaded 4G Networks
Today, Kyivstar is actively developing a 4G network in the 900 MHz band. The approximate amount of investment will be 4-5 billion UAH. By the end of the year, LTE coverage will cover 14,000 settlements, and about 3,500 cities and villages will use 4G communication in the 900 MHz band.

Kyivstar uses almost 8 thousand base stations to cover the country
Kyivstar uses almost 38 thousand base stations to cover the country

Due to the deployment of 4G in small settlements and the further increase in the share of smartphones among the population, mobile traffic is constantly growing. For example, in the second quarter of last year, the average number of gigabytes of traffic per subscriber (GBOU) was 3.3, and in the second quarter of this year — 5 GB , that is, an increase of 54%. At the same time, this is a very small figure compared to Europe, where GBOU is approximately 10 GB . On the other hand, the average number of minutes (MOU) in Ukraine, on the contrary, is twice as high as in Europe. In the coming years, we can expect further growth in Internet traffic, but a decrease in MOU.


The GBOU indicator in Ukraine is much lower than in Europe

The total revenue of the mobile communications industry in Ukraine is UAH 41.7 billion. The losses of the mobile market due to the COVID-19 pandemic amounted to about UAH 3 billion. 35% of the telecom industry's revenues go to taxes. In the EU, this figure is much lower — 21%.

Oleksandr Komarov, President of Kyivstar, noted that the main condition for the successful development of the telecommunications market is not to change the legislative "rules of the game" . After all, from south africa number data time to time, various populist bills appear in the Verkhovna Rada, for example, on content regulation, the need to store subscribers' data sessions for 12 months, etc. And this is a very negative factor.

At the same time, the state could significantly accelerate the development of the telecom industry by building passive infrastructure. O. Komarov estimates state investments at 1 billion hryvnias. In addition, these funds will be returned to the state quite quickly through lease payments. Such a step by the state could play a very positive role also because today the law on access to infrastructure does not work, and the attempt to improve it has not been successful.

About the prospects of 5G
5th generation mobile communications promise several serious advantages over LTE. First, the peak data transfer rate is 10-20 times higher (up to 20 Gbit/s for download). Second, the very high density of connected devices is up to 1 million per square kilometer. Third, the latency in the 5G network under ideal conditions is about 1 ms (compared to 20 ms for LTE). In addition, 5G will allow the subscriber to move at speeds of up to 500 km/h (in 4G - 120 km/h) and will provide guaranteed bandwidth.

Due to the very low latency of signal transmission, 5G technology can be used as a basis for the operation of IoT devices, driverless cars, various automatic equipment . For example, Huawei recently demonstrated the capabilities of 5th generation communication for remote control of tower cranes, mining harvesters and other equipment where the direct presence of a person is highly undesirable due to the risk to life.