A collective of Europe’s biggest telecom service providers such as Telefonica, Orange, Altice, Deutsche Telekom and BT recently issued a joint statement about combining forces to aid Ukrainian refugees. The European Telecommunications Network Operator’s Association (ETNO) stated an estimated 4.2 million refugees have left Ukraine to neighboring countries and their group “stands in full solidarity with Ukraine and the Ukrainian people.”
“In the face of this immediate and growing humanitarian crisis, EU and Ukrainian operators share the conviction that Ukrainian refugees should continue to have affordable access to connectivity to stay in touch with family and friends and to access the Internet and reliable sources of information,” ETNO said.
The signatories of the statement said many have already taken different actions to help ensure connectivity across the board. EU operators. ETNO said, have distributed and will continue distributing millions of SIM cards free of charge to allow Ukrainians to stay connected in the EU. Furthermore, EU operators have offered free or heavily discounted international calls and SMS to Ukraine, have enabled free outbound roaming for EU customers in Ukraine, have provided connectivity and charging at central points where refugees gather, have offered donation of essential equipment to Ukrainian operators and maintained essential international connection nodes.
“In parallel,” the statement read. “Ukrainian operators continue to keep the connectivity within Ukraine functioning, despite military aggressions. From the early days of this crisis, Ukrainian operators also ensured the resilience of their networks within the country and offered free roaming to Ukrainian people that fled the war.”
ETNO signatories of the joint statement, intend to:
- Reduce wholesale roaming charges and termination rates:
- Enable affordable roaming to be offered by Ukrainian operators at retail level, we commit to reductions of wholesale roaming charges towards at most a level allowing to cover the costs of providing the roaming service.
- Enable the continued provision of affordable international calls at retail level to Ukraine by EU operators and from Ukraine to EU by Ukrainian operators
- Reduce termination rates for calls originated by Ukrainian numbers towards the rates applied for calls originated by EU numbers to other EU numbers. This reduction should apply both to International calls from Ukraine to EU numbers and Ukrainian SIM cards roaming on an EU network.
- Pass on the full benefits of the reduction of termination rates by Ukrainian operators to customers calling from the EU to Ukraine.
Ukrainian operators who are signatories of the statement intend to:
- Gradually reduce international termination rates for calls to Ukraine originated by EU numbers and calls to Ukraine originated by Ukrainian numbers roaming in the EU, towards the levels allowing EU operators to offer reduced wholesale roaming charges and affordable international calls to end users calling Ukraine, bearing in mind the rates as defined in Commission Delegated Regulation (EU) 2021/654 and the need for Ukrainian operators to continue offering their services on a sustainable basis.
- Pass on the full benefits of the reduction of wholesale roaming charges by EU operators to customers roaming in the EU.
The statement will be reviewed in the next few months to take into account the fast changing situation, its humanitarian objective and whether other longer-term measures by public authorities and/or industry are more adequate.
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