Kyivstar mobile operator confirms the trend of Ukrainians returning home after forced evacuation.
“We can confirm that there is a trend of returning Ukrainians home. We really can monitor all migration. We can monitor all countries. Today, according to Kyivstar, Poland has placed 35% of Ukrainians. Germany - 15%, Czech Republic - 7%, Italy - 5 %, Moldova and Romania - 2%. There are the top countries where Kyivstar customers went, "he said.
According to Oleksandr Komarov, there are two types of internal migration: from large cities to settlements and from east to west. About 4 million people moved to other regions of the country, the others moved from cities to villages within their regions.
"Internal migration of such a large number of people is a technical challenge for mobile networks," the president of Kyivstar said.
According to him, the average speed of mobile Internet in the Kyivstar network has decreased from about 38 Mbps to 28 Mbps because almost 5 million subscribers left cities for rural areas.
"They just left areas where mobile data are available in the ranges of 1800MHz and 2600MHz. Then they arrived in the regions where the LTE-900 technology is available, which has less capacity. That is why we are now considering our plan to build new base stations this year. For example, we should replace LTE-900 with LTE-1800 in areas where the number of subscribers significantly increased. It is possible to increase the range up to 2600MHz in some areas, "- the president of the mobile operating company said.
To remind, according to the UN, more than 14 million Ukrainians left their homes due to Russia's armed aggression against Ukraine. 8 millions thereof became internally displaced persons. 227 partners, mostly national non-governmental organizations, have supplied humanitarian aid to more than 5.4 million people, mainly in the east.