According to sources of the publication «Ekonomichna Pravda» in the field of telecom services, Ukraine wants to create a military operator that will provide communications in the zone up to 30 km from the line of combat contact.
According to sources of the publication «Ekonomichna Pravda» in the field of telecom services, Ukraine wants to create a military operator that will provide communications in the zone up to 30 km from the line of combat contact.
The publication notes that in this way the Ukrainian military will receive a backup network for communication in the event of a Starlink satellite Internet shutdown.
Earlier, the National Commission for Electronic Communications Regulation approved the Cabinet of Ministers' draft amendments to the radio frequency allocation plan. It provides for granting permission to the Armed Forces of Ukraine to create private secure 4G/5G networks, ensuring fast and reliable data transmission.
The potential military operator will operate near the front line, where civilian mobile providers no longer operate. Telecommunications expert Roman Khimich believes that there are two options for the emergence of a military operator:
There have been attempts to create a military mobile operator before.
«We received the first SIM cards of a military operator during the defense of Avdiivka. It exists and develops locally,» said an interlocutor of «EP» from the Defense Forces. He added that it was an isolated mobile network with its own SIM cards, to which only the military had access.
The Armed Forces of Ukraine use LTE as a backup communication channel if there is no access to fiber-optic Internet or Starlink. It is noted that the development of a separate 4G/5G network requires significant resources, is vulnerable to Russian attacks and is inferior in convenience to Starlink.
«When there is Starlink, it is difficult to force pilots or units to return to other solutions. There are few towers, coverage is worse, the equipment needs to be configured and directed correctly, additional knowledge is required, and Starlink is plugged into the outlet — and there is Internet,» explained an anonymous Ukrainian military officer.
