Mobile operators in Ukraine blocked more than 170,000 numbers used for spam calls during the first year of the country’s new telecom rules. Ukrainian business outlet Ekonomichna Pravda reported the figure, citing data from the Ministry of Digital Transformation.
The rules come from government resolution No. 761. It banned marketing calls, text messages, auto-dialers and recorded voice messages without a subscriber’s consent. Operators were given three months to prepare, and the rules took effect on October 2, 2025. Even with consent, subscribers must be able to tell who is calling and how to opt out.
Any business that calls customers regularly has to verify its identity and sign a separate contract with an operator. Without that contract, service on the number can be suspended. Repeat violations give the operator grounds to terminate the deal.
Operators spot violations through subscriber complaints and by watching how a number behaves on the network. The rules introduced the concept of “unproductive calls” — mass short calls, calls placed to large batches of numbers, or numbers that cannot be called back. Operators can also act on abnormal traffic, meaning a flood of identical calls from a single number.
Follow Mediasat on Google News: the latest in TV, telecom and tech
Operators send the ministry monthly reports on blocked numbers and the reasons behind each case. Kyivstar blocked 98,086 numbers between October 2, 2025 and August 21, 2026, after receiving 9,164 complaints. Rival lifecell keeps about 9,000 mobile and fixed numbers blocked. Vodafone Ukraine did not respond to the outlet’s request. In late April the ministry put the running total at 100,000 numbers.
Spam has not disappeared. Ukrainians still get calls from online casinos and from scammers congratulating them on a “prize.” One gap in the rules is cross-network blocking. An operator has no technical way to restrict a number that belongs to a rival, so complaints drag on. The ministry is working on a shared blocklist. Once one operator flags a number as spam, every other network would block it too.
The second problem is that businesses are slow to sign those contracts. Kyivstar says clients are gradually moving to the legal model for commercial calls, but the market is still adjusting. Companies want their calls identified correctly rather than flagged as spam, the operator says. lifecell says most of its contracts were signed before 2026 and the number has not grown much this year. One reason is an extra wholesale rate operators charge each other for such calls.
Meanwhile, the firms generating unwanted calls keep changing tactics. They reroute traffic, hold large pools of numbers and look for new ways around detection. That makes fully automated detection a hard technical problem, Kyivstar says.
The resolution covers more than spam. It also regulates paid add-ons such as weather forecasts and access to music and mobile games. If a service was activated without consent, the operator has to switch it off no later than the next business day and refund what was charged. Paid content now needs a separate confirmation. The customer orders the service, then confirms the order, and without that no money can be taken.
Once a subscription is active, the operator must remind the subscriber at least once a month. On request it has to name the content provider, the order date and the total charged. Automatic renewals require at least seven days’ notice, along with instructions on how to cancel for free. Subscribers can drop content services from their account dashboard.
From early 2027, spam complaints will be split into a separate category. Operator apps will have to include a dedicated spam complaint button. Complaints will also be accepted through Diia, Ukraine’s government services app, which the ministry expects to speed up operator response times.
The rules also set spending limits — the amount or volume of service a subscriber can use before paying. The limit can be lowered, waived entirely or checked for free. Wartime rules add another layer. Subscribers in areas of active fighting and in temporarily occupied territory cannot be cut off, not even over an unpaid balance.
