Station of the sparsely populated future

Until the end of the year, Russian telecom operators will conclude forward contracts for the supply of Russian 4G and 5G base stations. Their manufacturers will receive financial support from the state, and operators are obliged to buy a certain amount of equipment. Rostelecom’s supplier will be its Bulat structure and Yadro, which is part of ICS Holding. Negotiations are also conducted by MTS and VimpelCom. Deliveries of base stations will begin as early as 2023, but, according to Kommersant, they will not exceed several thousand, which will be up to 10% of all operators’ needs. This equipment will equip, first of all, remote and sparsely populated regions.

By the end of December, Russian telecom operators will sign forward contracts for the supply of Russian 4G and 5G base stations, their manufacturers will be provided with targeted state support, Maksut Shadayev, head of the Ministry of Digital Development, said at a meeting of the State Duma Committee on Information Policy, IT and Communications. According to the minister, when signing the contract, manufacturers “take responsibility for specific regions, specifications, by year – how many 4G / 5G base stations they are ready to ship.” Under these contracts, the Ministry of Digital Development will provide targeted financial support for the development of production in the required volumes, Mr. Shadayev specified.

Now in Russia, several organizations are developing base stations of 4G and 5G standards. The creation of 4G base stations in Russia is carried out by Spektr of Rostec (see. “Kommersant” dated August 20, 2021). 5G base stations are being developed by Skoltech. In May, it became known that Yadro, a computer technology vendor that is part of ICS Holding, will develop and manufacture LTE and 5G base stations (see. “Kommersant” dated May 19).

At a meeting of the State Duma Committee on Information Policy, Rostelecom President Mikhail Oseevsky said that the operator plans to receive the first batches of base stations in 2023.

According to him, domestic base stations at the first stage will be used in small towns.

At the Live Electronics of Russia forum on September 28, organized by TMT Conferences (Kommersant got acquainted with the record), Alexei Sapunov, Senior Vice President for Technical Infrastructure of Rostelecom, said that the operator plans to sign five-year forward agreements for the supply of base stations with manufacturers Bulat (owned by Rostelecom and Rostec) and Yadro (part of ICS Holding). In 2023, according to him, deliveries are planned from Bulat, and in 2025 from Yadro. Rostec confirmed that Spektr is preparing for mass production of base stations. Skoltech and Yadro declined to comment.

MTS Kommersant confirmed that they are negotiating with potential suppliers of domestic base stations. Previously, the operator tested Skoltech 5G base stations.

A source familiar with the situation says that Vimpelcom is conducting similar negotiations. With whom negotiations are underway, the interlocutors of Kommersant did not specify. MegaFon said that they were “testing prototypes of domestic base stations.” VimpelCom and Tele2 declined to comment.

Telecom operators are now not ready to advance the production of domestic base stations, a Kommersant source familiar with the details of the negotiations says: for which there is not enough foreign equipment.

In the current “sanctions” situation, components for the production of domestic base stations will be enough for a maximum of 10% of the total demand of operators, says another interlocutor of Kommersant in the industry: “And this is actually a good level. Going to the next stage – maintaining networks, which will require about 50% of the needs of operators – will be a serious challenge for the industry.” According to him, by 2024, operators will receive “several thousand” domestic base stations: “More than 10 thousand in 2025 in the presence of a component base.” The interlocutor admits that the equipment at the first stage will be significantly inferior to foreign ones in terms of characteristics: “I assume that the achievement of comparable quality (the totality of all characteristics, and not just the data transfer rate) will happen no earlier than 2027-2028. The base station is very easy to build, hard to get going and fantastically hard to get right.”

Yulia Silence, Anastasia Gavrilyuk, Timofey Kornev