“Miranda-media” spreads nets – Newspaper Kommersant No. 41 (7486) of 03/13/2023

The Crimean telecom operator Miranda-media, which is 20% owned by Rostelecom, is preparing to start working in the DPR. The company is looking for employees who will audit and develop the local telecommunications infrastructure. The operator will start working before May 1, the Ministry of Digital Development specified. It is assumed that Miranda-Media will become a single communications operator in the DPR, LPR, Kherson and Zaporozhye regions. According to Kommersant, the company may absorb the current operators of the DNR and LNR. To gain a foothold in the regions, experts say, it will have to combine disparate equipment of existing networks and overcome an acute shortage of personnel.

On March 2, Miranda-media LLC posted a vacancy for a technical director in Donetsk on HH.ru. The employee, judging by the announcement, will have to deal with the integration of backbone communication networks, planning the unification of the transport network, organizing the audit of backbone lines and communication centers, interacting with authorities and providing communication services in the consumer segment and the public sector. The salary will be 250 thousand rubles. on your hands.

Kommersant’s interlocutor, close to the government, believes that Miranda Media can buy out the assets of local telecom operators and deploy work based on their networks. Operators Phoenix (Republican Telecom Operator) and Lugacom (Mobile Communication Systems) already operate in the DPR and LPR. The last one launched in 2015. According to a Kommersant source familiar with the structure of the market in the DPR, Miranda Media will soon absorb Phoenix: “Under the current conditions, the government of the region, which owns the operator, cannot develop the asset.”

The Ministry of Digital Development of the DPR redirected the questions of “Kommersant” to the Ministry of Digital Development of the Russian Federation. The latter clarified that the operator should start working in the region before May 1: “The company can become a single operator for new regions.”

To create a single operator that will work on the territory of the DPR, LPR, Kherson and Zaporozhye regions, in February, the relevant Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Chernyshenko instructed. The head of the Ministry of Digital Development Maksut Shadayev said in March that the operator could appear before the end of the year. At the moment, the main task of Miranda-Media is “to form an alternative backbone traffic that will eliminate the monopoly in the communication markets in the republic,” the Ministry of Digital Development specified. Miranda Media, Lugacom and Phoenix Telecom did not respond to Kommersant, Rostelecom declined to comment.

Kommersant wrote about Miranda-Media’s plans to start working in the DPR and LPR last summer (see “Kommersant” dated June 30, 2022). Sources believed that the operator would need 10-20 billion rubles to upgrade the infrastructure in the regions. In August, the company’s structures under the MirTelecom brand began to work in the Kherson and Zaporozhye regions, and now they are expanding their business.

“Unification of networks is always a difficult task, it is necessary to achieve compatibility in address space, elevated services and other areas. In this regard, I think there may be a problem of equipment compatibility,” says Ruslan Permyakov, deputy director of the NTI Competence Center “Trusted Interaction Technologies”.

According to the expert, it is quite difficult to create a sustainable infrastructure in the current conditions.

“There are practically no prospects that sanctions will be weakened or loopholes will appear that allow the use of equipment from countries that have imposed sanctions,” Mr. Permyakov explains. Therefore, he believes, it will be necessary to use the equipment of those countries that do not exert sanctions pressure on Russia. Russian operators are already testing equipment from India and China (see “Kommersant” dated February 9).

When combining networks, technical directors, as a rule, are faced with the need to put things in order in the “zoo of equipment and other people’s business processes,” adds Alexander Sivolobov, deputy head of the NTI Competence Center based on Skoltech for wireless communications and the Internet of things.

Kommersant’s interlocutor in the Russian telecom market believes that Miranda Media will also face problems in the DPR that are specific to the region, including a shortage of personnel: “Now many forums are looking for installers, those who are ready to go there are especially in demand . But despite the rather dangerous nature of the work, the salary is low.”

Nikita Korolev, Yulia Yurasova