Rostec, a state-owned conglomerate covering a wide range of technologies, including military ones, has established a company dedicated to supply 4G, 5G and 6G equipment on the national market. Dubbed ‘Specter,’ the company will aim to organize the “cooperation” of Russian equipment makers in technical and production terms, reports business daily Kommersant.
In November last year the Russian government adopted a 4G and 5G deployment plan until 2024. Mobile operators will be required to use domestic equipment for 4G networks as early as 2023, instead of relying on the supplies of ZTE, Nokia, Huawei, Ericsson and alike as is the case today.
Operators are also required to deploy 5G networks — also using domestic equipment — in at least 10 cities of one million inhabitants or more by 2026.
While the production of domestic 5G equipment is set begin no later than 2023, the full success of Russia’s import substitution in this field is anything but certain. State-of-the-art mobile systems usually require components from a hundred specialized suppliers located in dozens of countries, said an Ericsson representative in an exchange Kommersant. It takes years to develop such hardware and software components, he underlined.
