During blackouts, the internet transforms from a convenience into survival infrastructure — for evacuation alerts, banking operations, and communication with relatives at the front. This is why the Ministry of Digital Transformation tracks the deployment of xPON networks separately from ordinary coverage statistics.
xPON is fiber-optic networks with backup power at nodes: a subscriber remains online for up to 72 hours even without centralized electricity supply. Unlike traditional cable or mobile internet, the network does not collapse together with a substation.
The Ministry of Digital Transformation identified five regions where deployment is happening most actively — the specific regions were disclosed by the department in its report on the state of digital infrastructure. This is not a random distribution: the connection rate correlates with the level of partnership between local administrations and providers, as well as with access to international financing for network reconstruction.
The logic of scale is simple: when one district of a city receives stable internet during outages and a neighboring one does not, the difference is felt at the level of a specific family. When the entire country is divided the same way, this becomes a question of equal access to security.
The xPON deployment program is funded partly from the state budget, partly through grants from international partners. Providers receive compensation for connections, but the verification mechanism for nodes with backup power that actually function remains non-transparent: the Ministry publishes data on the number of connections, but not on the percentage of nodes that passed blackout verification.
If during the next major wave of outages the networks in five leading regions truly maintain 72 hours of operation — the statistics will cease to be a reporting metric and become an argument for the rest of the regions. But what will happen to the program if verification shows that backup power exists only on paper?
