Representatives of mobile service operators are very cautious in their forecasts about future work on territory, uncontrolled by Ukraine. Such “veil of secrecy” creates grounds for spreading of different rumors – kind of one operator leaves “republican” market, another one – increases influence. Leaders of fighters of the “LPR” and “DPR” promise to launch their own mobile operators.
“Kyivstar”
4 Ukrainian mobile service operators work on the territory of “Luhansk republic” – “Ukrtelekom”, “Intertelekom”, “Life” and “MTS-Ukraine”. Almost all providers have problems on uncontrolled territories.
At the moment “Kyivstar” company stopped providing mobile service on uncontrolled by Ukraine territories of Luhansk and Donetsk regions. The company explains that its property and equipment on occupied territories of Donetsk and Luhansk regions was damaged by “unknown armed people”.
In April, 2015, it was reported that “DPR’s” authorities “nationalized” equipment of the “Kyivstar” on territories, controlled by them, and passed it to “Republican Communication Center”. Also fighters reported about creation of “republican” operator of mobile service. People supposed that fighters would use “Kyivstar’s” equipment for “Donetsk” mobile operator.
The Head of Corporative Communications of the CC “Kyivstar” Petr Ivanov made a statement later in media, where he underlined, that stolen equipment would be not enough for fighters to launch new system of mobile service. The expert supposes that new mobile service operator in “DPR” means that additional equipment and specialists were delivered to the “republic”. At the same moment representatives of the “LPR” started to talk about their own mobile service operator. Authorities of the “LPR” stated on June 18 that local mobile service operator “Lugakom”, which covered about 60% of the territory of Luhansk, was testing that moment.
Closed source in the “Ministry of Communications of the LPR” reported to correspondent of the Informator.lg.ua that “republic’s” curators from Moscow paid much attention to the work of mobile service on the territory of “republic”:
“Russians need reliable mobile service on the territory of “young republics” for operative resolution of logistic issues – movement of cargoes, movement of columns of military equipment, servicemen and etc. It is difficult and unreasonable to provide personnel with satellite phones and personal radio stations that is why they rely on mobile operators. They also tried to negotiate with Russian and Ukrainian providers of mobile services, tried to launch their own one, but it is hard to say on what stage they are now”, — our interlocutor said.
Fall of the “MTS” and rise of “Life”
MTS mobile service stopped working almost on all territory of the “Luhansk Republic” on June 23. Only 30 % of region’s territory was still covered with MTS. Representatives of the company assured our correspondent that connection failed because of problems with equipment on uncontrolled territories and absence of access to it for repair.
It is worth saying that “MTS-Ukraine” in Luhanshchina was one of the most popular operators before the war. It controlled about 70% of mobile service market in the region.
The “Head of the LPR” Igor Plotnitskiy announced in the beginning of July that operator “MTS-Ukraine” tried to impose its rules during negotiations. On July 4 fighters didn’t have information about future work of the MTS on uncontrolled territories. But on July 7 “MTS” operator renewed its work on occupied territories.
“MTS” company stated then that it appreciated its clients, who stayed on territories uncontrolled by Ukraine, and didn’t plan to “leave”.
Problems of “MTS” operator, failure of “Kyivstar” created conditions for success of mobile operator “Life”, which is becoming more and more popular in “Republic”. Prices for “Life” sim-cards reached 100 UAH, when other operators had significant problems. LuhanskInformTsentr reported that “Life” was building up to improve quality of its mobile service. Igor Plotnitskiy -the “Head of the LPR” also said: “Life” is developing now. It’s a Turkish company and it doesn’t care where to earn money – in Ukraine or in LPR”.
Write letters
It is worth saying that Ukrainian operators, which work on uncontrolled territories, are in difficult situations – from the one side they have to work within Ukrainian legal field, from the other – to repair and change equipment on occupied territories they have to cooperate with representatives of “fighters”, who impose their conditions.
Moreover, mobile service operators bear significant losses holding constant repair works because of combats on uncontrolled territories. It is possible that not all companies are ready for such losses, but they will not announce it openly.
According to our source leadership of the “Republic” has to implement very clear task: to provide work of mobile service on the territory, controlled by fighters. And it is not clear now whether they do it or not.
Aleksey Chernov for theInformator.lg.ua