A draft law on amendments to the Law «On Critical Infrastructure» has been registered in the Verkhovna Rada, which proposes to classify mobile operators' facilities as critical infrastructure of the highest level.
A draft law on amendments to the Law «On Critical Infrastructure» has been registered in the Verkhovna Rada, which proposes to classify mobile operators' facilities as critical infrastructure of the highest level.
Bill No. 12420 was registered in the Rada on January 17 and has already been sent for consideration by the relevant committee, and its co-authors are People’s Deputy Oleksandr Fedienko and more than 10 of his colleagues.
«It is proposed to identify providers of electronic communications networks and/or services, mobile communication networks (operators) that provide electronic communications services of mobile communication not only as critical infrastructure, but also to immediately determine the highest category of criticality based on the criticality criteria verified by the entire country in 2023 as a result of a cyberattack on one operator,» the explanatory note states.
In justifying the need to adopt the bill, its authors recall the large-scale failure that occurred in December 2023 in the work of the Kyivstar communications operator, demonstrating this case as one of the reasons for introducing this initiative.
«24 million subscribers lost their connection. Failures occurred in all equipment that used Kyivstar’s connection, which led to serious infrastructure problems throughout Ukraine,» the explanatory note recalls.
In view of this, it is proposed to assign the operators' facilities to Category I criticality, since they supposedly have a significant impact on other critical infrastructure facilities, and disruption of their functioning will lead to a crisis situation of national importance.
At the same time, as dev.ua wrote, on October 30, the Verkhovna Rada failed bill No. 11431 on regulating the issue of state supervision in the field of electronic communications and operationally ensuring the stability of electronic communications networks, which provided for significant fines for mobile operators for non-provision or poor-quality provision of services during blackouts.
