BEREC Analysis Monitoring of the Joint Statement agreed between Ukraine and EU Operators

Following the ongoing war against Ukraine, launched by Russia with the invasion of Ukraine on 24 February 2022, the Body of European Regulators for Electronic Communications (BEREC) has closely followed the telecommunications sector’s response to the crisis and welcomed the measures voluntarily provided by EU operators. In order to get a full picture of what has been implemented by operators, BEREC already in March 2022 started to collect information from NRAs and operators. In May 2022, BEREC continued with a second data collection exercise, with the aim of gathering more detailed information covering not only the retail measures applied by European Economic Area1 (EEA) and Ukrainian (UA) operators but also the relevant wholesale measures agreed in the Joint Statement.2 This Joint Statement establishes a stable framework to help people fleeing the war in Ukraine stay in touch with family and friends back home and maintain access to information. The Joint Statement in the meantime was renewed and prolongs the measures that UA and EEA operators agreed initially in April 2022 for another 6 months.3 The measures include affordable or free calls, extend the measures to cover calls to fixed line numbers in Ukraine and ensure sustainable inter-operator prices, which allow operators to provide consumers with cross-border calls at an affordable rate. BEREC and the Ukrainian National Regulatory Authority, NCEC, were tasked to monitor the implementation of the agreed measures and therefore launched this third data round of data collection.
Altogether, 7 UA operators and 20 EEA groups and operators signed the Joint Statement that is open to all operators willing to sign. This report includes data from 25 NRAs (24 BEREC members or participants without voting rights plus the Ukrainian National Regulatory Authority NCEC. In particular, the 24 BEREC member NRAs have received replies from 52 mobile and 33 fixed operators. NCEC has received data from 4 mobile operators and 3 fixed operators. All UA operators signed the Joint Statement, hence there is no further differentiation between them.