Telecom will go to the score – Newspaper Kommersant No. 37 (7482) dated 03/03/2023

The Ministry of Industry and Trade plans to launch a mechanism for scoring the level of “domesticity” of Russian telecommunications equipment in September. The Ministry coordinates with market participants the final version of the relevant resolution. It assumes that equipment that is at least assembled in Russia will be recognized as domestic. Manufacturers must have their own production sites and service centers. Market participants suggest that in the future the ministry will tighten the requirements in order to stimulate the transition to domestic components. However, so far there are almost none for telecommunications equipment.

The Ministry of Industry and Trade has completed the development of amendments to government decree No. 719, which will introduce a point system for obtaining domestic status for telecommunications equipment, sources told Kommersant in the market. A notification about the development of the document was published on the regulation.gov.ru website, it also says that the norms will come into force in September. The project itself has not been published. The Ministry of Industry and Trade explained to Kommersant that it “will be published after consultations with the industry.”

“Kommersant” got acquainted with the latest version of the document.

It follows from it that in order to include equipment in the register, the manufacturer must own the rights to the design documentation of products and the source code of the system software, have service centers for maintenance, its own production site, etc.

For each technological operation in production (assembly and installation, the use of Russian components in it, etc.), points will be awarded. When a certain number of points is scored, the equipment is recognized as Russian. Under the regulation, follows from the document, fall, in particular, switches, routers, radar equipment, set-top boxes, etc. The government has already introduced a similar methodology for computer technology (see “Kommersant” dated September 15, 2022).

Now the decision on whether telecommunications equipment is considered domestic or not is made by the expert council at the Ministry of Industry and Trade, its work is regulated by Decree No. 878. A Kommersant source in the electronics market says that the ministry and industry representatives planned to change the rules from 2021: “Due to the opacity of the assessment, equipment that is not related to Russia could be included in the register of telecommunications equipment. In fact, it was foreign equipment with re-glued nameplates.”

The Ministry of Industry and Trade expects that the point system will create “favorable conditions for the development of the domestic radio-electronic industry and will encourage manufacturers to systematically increase the level of localization of production in Russia.”

The Yadro group agrees with the regulator, adding that the launch of the mechanism “will contribute to a gradual gradual increase in the share of domestic equipment produced in the country.”

Oleg Osipov, co-owner of Beshtau Electronics, hopes that in the future the Ministry of Industry and Trade will “tighten the criteria for the scoring system, stimulating Russian manufacturers of telecom equipment to increase the share of Russian components in their products.” However, right now there are simply no domestic components for the production of telecommunications equipment, especially high-tech ones, emphasizes the interlocutor of Kommersant in one of the electronics manufacturers.

The production of modern base stations of the fourth and fifth generations requires a high-quality electronic component base, which is currently represented almost exclusively by foreign suppliers, confirms Alexander Sivolobov, deputy head of the NTI Competence Center based on Skoltech for wireless communication and the Internet of things. “We are actively working with Russian manufacturers,” he emphasizes, “so that in three years the share of domestic products in the specialized critical electronic component base will be 5-10%.

Nikita Korolev