Irtea, owned by MTS, will launch production at a plant in Tomsk
Publishing «Kommersant» reports that MTS-owned developer of telecommunications equipment «Irteya» is going to set up production of base stations for 5G and 4G cellular networks at the facilities of the Tomsk plant «Mikran». The company's general director, Dmitry Lakontsev, told reporters about this. According to him, the start of production is scheduled for 2024, it is planned to produce 1 thousand base stations of 4G and 5G standards. And already from 2025 «Irthea» intends to produce 5–10 thousand base stations annually.
It is planned to test domestic equipment mainly in Moscow and the Moscow region; the company wants to begin testing in the first half of next year. At the same time, the cost of one base station in «Irtey» are not disclosed, although, according to the Kommersant publication, the price could be 1.5–2 million rubles. As for the localization of equipment, the Director of Communications «Irtei» Alexander Sivolobov noted that the domestic electronic component base is already being used and its share will only increase. But according to the source, so far the share of foreign components in the base stations of the Russian company is more than 90%.
Other Russian operators are also considering domestic equipment for their networks. Moreover, in accordance with the requirements of the authorities, by 2028 all new base stations must be only domestic. In «MegaFon» talked about testing various types of network equipment and components, including domestic production. In «VimpelCom» reported that they «welcome competition in the domestic telecom equipment market», and Tele2 «consider Russian manufacturers and work with vendors under forward contracts».