The overwhelming majority of mobile base stations across Ukraine are now equipped to keep running through extended power outages, according to the Ministry of Digital Transformation. The ministry said 92% of base stations can operate for up to eight hours without electricity, while 67% can keep functioning for more than three days thanks to backup generators.
Mobile operators have purchased generators to maintain connectivity during prolonged blackouts, and utility companies have since learned how to hook those generators up to base stations, the ministry said.
Regional readiness drills
Network readiness is being checked through dedicated training exercises. Nearly every region in Ukraine has already tested coordination between mobile operators, regional authorities and local communities, examining how quickly repair crews can be deployed, how fast they can reach base stations, and how efficiently generators can be started up.
In the Mykolaiv region alone, the drills involved 44 communities, 74 mobile repair crews and 93 base stations.
Tested under real attacks
Some regions have already had their network resilience tested by actual blackouts rather than exercises. Following a massive attack on 9 August, power supply in Odesa remained unstable for almost three days, yet the mobile network there was kept running at more than 71% capacity.
According to the Ministry of Digital Transformation, the Volyn, Kirovohrad, Zaporizhzhia, Kyiv and Sumy regions received the largest numbers of generators. Among individual cities, Sumy, Zaporizhzhia and Odesa led in generator deployment.
3G shutdown and the road to 5G
The update on backup power comes as Ukraine's telecoms sector also moves through other major network changes. Kyivstar, one of the country's largest mobile operators, became the first in Ukraine to complete a full shutdown of its 3G network. All Ukrainian mobile operators are required to switch off 3G entirely by 1 January 2031, as networks shift toward newer technology.
Kyivstar chief executive Oleksandr Komarov has said he believes it will be difficult to roll out mobile 5G internet across the whole of Ukraine before the war ends. War-related damage to infrastructure and the need to prioritise resilience of existing networks have made large-scale upgrades more difficult to carry out nationwide.
5G technology has already been tested on a pilot basis in Lviv, Kharkiv, Borodianka and Kyiv. Odesa is set to be the next city where the pilot project is expanded.
What happens next
With regional testing of blackout readiness continuing and Odesa's mobile network having already withstood a nearly three-day power disruption in August, operators and local authorities are expected to keep running similar exercises across other regions as they prepare base stations for further extended outages.
