During the conference “Ukraine: Resilience of Communications and the Internet in Time of War,” operators and ISPs discussed the current needs for restoring telecommunications infrastructure. Experts are unanimous in saying that underground utilities are more secure than overhead ones, but there are nuances.
Restoration of networks
Dmytro Samsonenko, head of Osnova-TV from Chernihiv, said that the ISP’s network was completely destroyed. As of today, 100 km of optical cables have been restored, and in fact, re-laid. During the blackouts, they started connecting apartments directly with optical cables, and installed generators at the nodes.
According to him, fortunately, none of the arrivals damaged Ukrtelecom’s underground channels. But the overhead lines were all destroyed.
“If you approach a tree, you see that all the branches are cut. And if the line is stretched and seems to be normal, then a similar situation arises. For example, out of four fibers, only two are intact,” he says.
Therefore, if there is artillery shelling, we need to understand that all air communication lines will need to be rebuilt.
Kramatorsk under fire
Mykola Kucheruk, head of the Kramatorsk-based company Elit-Line, said that the provider is restoring the Internet in Kramatorsk, which is constantly under fire from Russian missiles, as quickly as possible.
“A rocket arrived, and in two hours we restored some optical area. Damage to the sewerage system takes longer to repair,” he says.
The provider has experience since 2014. Back then, the company had only two uplinks, and after the shelling, the Internet could have been lost altogether. So now they have created 7 connections to other networks. But during the full-scale aggression, connections started to fall off one by one – to Kharkiv and Kyiv. Until there was only one left. Thanks to the cooperation of all the backbone operators, they were able to reconnect, and today they have 4 independent channels in different directions. And it is quite difficult to leave Kramatorsk without the Internet today, as the infrastructure is fully ready.
After the full-scale aggression, the company decided that there should be at least two server rooms, and they should be located somewhere underground, not on some floor of a high-rise building. The node should have several trunk channels. And it is necessary to reduce the human factor. Everything should work independently. The cable is in the ground, the generator starts automatically.
Underground nuances
But there are nuances with underground lines. The approval process can take more than a year.
For example, last year and this year, Elit-Line laid underground cables that were approved back in 2020.
“The bureaucratic machine, unfortunately, does not allow us to quickly deploy optical networks underground,” Kucheruk emphasizes.
According to him, the speed of deploying underground networks is ten times slower than deploying overhead networks. Three teams can stretch 4-5 km of cables in a day, but it takes a week to lay a kilometer of cable underground. It depends on the condition of the soil and the state of the sewage system.
“It is very secure, but it takes a long time to deploy,” the expert adds.
That is, in his opinion, in the de-occupied territories, the operator that will lay overhead lines will take away all customers from the operator that will approve and build the network in the sewer. It will be more secure, but it will have very few subscribers.
Damage to underground networks
In turn, Oleksandr Savchuk, Chairman of the Board of the Internet Association of Ukraine, noted that before the war, most damage to underground telecommunications was intentional, but during the war it was completely reduced to zero.
At the same time, damage related to earthworks has increased. The military and the defense forces created a large number of fortifications.
“Today, the situation has leveled off, meaning that malicious damage has increased again,” he said.
Pilot network
Today, the Ministry of Digital Transformation announced the launch of a pilot project with Nokia.
The plan is to upgrade telecom equipment and switch to non-volatile Internet networks. They are more protected from shelling and blackouts.
The project, which will be deployed in Posad Pokrovsky in the Kherson region, where all networks have been destroyed by shelling and bombing, plans to lay the cable underground. This was stated by Deputy Prime Minister Mykhailo Fedorov.
“This way, local residents will be connected even in critical conditions, and providers will not risk their lives,” he emphasized.
