Dear Fatherland – Newspaper Kommersant No. 193 (7394) dated 10/18/2022

Telecom operators are afraid of rising costs for the construction of 5G networks due to the requirement of the Ministry of Digital Development, according to which, from September 1, 2023, they can only register radio-electronic means of domestic production. In this case, all the costs of installing 5G-ready equipment that operators have already made will be in vain. To meet the new requirements, new generation networks will have to be built separately, experts and market participants say. Manufacturers of domestic equipment, however, promise that it will be compatible with foreign ones.

Kommersant got acquainted with Rostelecom’s response to the draft government decree, developed by the Ministry of Digital Development and posted for public discussion on September 9. It amends the rules for registering radio electronic equipment (RES) and assumes that from September 2023, operators will not be able to register RES intended for 5G networks if their software and hardware are not included in the register of Russian radio electronic products and the register of Russian software.

Rostelecom notes that the RES installed by operators of foreign production are incompatible with Russian software:

“If the project is adopted, there may be a risk of non-compliance with the requirements of the law regarding the provision of communication services to the population, since the use of RES will be unacceptable due to the impossibility of registering them.”

The Ministry of Industry and Trade redirected the request to the Ministry of Digital Development. At present, an edition has been prepared that removes 5G pilot zones from the scope of the decree, the Ministry of Digital Transformation assured Kommersant: “As part of a joint study with the FSB and Roskomnadzor, appropriate decisions were made to use exclusively Russian equipment for commercial 5G networks.”

The press service of Rostelecom noted that in the current conditions it is important not to create an additional financial burden on telecom operators so that they can ensure the continuity and quality of services.

MTS reported that they are participating in the discussion of the project. Tele2 emphasized that so far there is no ready-made solution that allows interaction between foreign and domestic equipment. The company expects that such products will appear on the market, “although the deadline of September 2023 indicated in the project seems unrealistic.”

A Kommersant source in one of the operators noted that the 5G-ready equipment currently installed on the networks of operators will be incompatible with domestic software: “It will have to be changed – the existing LTE network is a reference layer for 5G, the computing capabilities of base stations and a single software package are being reused. The investments made by operators in building 5G-ready networks will be in vain.”

Vendors of domestic equipment are more optimistic. According to Alexander Sivolobov, Deputy Head of the NTI Competence Center based on Skoltech (develops 5G equipment) for wireless communication and the Internet of Things, the first results of compatibility with equipment from foreign vendors have already been achieved: “Testing has shown the operability of the Competence Center solution in a multi-vendor network” . Spektra base stations comply with the 3GPP international standard and are compatible with foreign equipment of the same standard, Kommersant was assured at Spektra (part of Rostec).

But the interlocutor of Kommersant in one of the major equipment manufacturers is sure that developers will not be able to achieve compatibility of domestic equipment with foreign ones:

“Even if Russian vendors can produce hardware, it will not be integrated into the existing networks of operators, which means that 5G networks will be built separately from the existing ones.”

According to the expert, it will be 40-50% more expensive than building on the basis of existing networks.

There are two fifth-generation network architectures: 5G SA (stand alone) and 5G NSA (non-stand alone), explained MForum analyst Alexei Boyko. According to him, SA does not require any other networks, NSA relies on the operator’s existing 2/3/4G networks. In world practice, operators usually build 5G NSA, not everyone can afford the construction of 5G SA: this requires large investments at the first stage, he noted. Therefore, Russian operators will either have to change all previous foreign 4G equipment to Russian, the expert believes, or build 5G SA, “which is also very expensive.”

Anastasia Gavrilyuk, Timofey Kornev