Russia fails to replace imports of mobile communications equipment

Russian telecommunications equipment manufacturers have faced a shortage of domestic components and asked the government to reconsider the terms of import substitution.

Source: According to the Russian newspaper The Moscow Times, this follows from a letter from the Telecommunication Technologies Consortium (TT Consortium, which unites Rostech, Rostelecom, Element, etc.) to the Ministry of Industry and Trade and the Ministry of Digital Transformation, a copy of which was obtained by Vedomosti.

Details: In particular, the manufacturers suggested that the agencies loose the new requirements for recognising equipment as domestic.

A draft government decree prepared by the Ministry of Trade and Industry at the end of August suggests that Russian telecom equipment must contain at least 10% of domestic electronic components in 2026, 30% in 2028, and 60% in 2030.

However, according to a letter from ANO TT, telecoms market participants analysed the domestic market for analogues of foreign components and found that the proposed percentage of Russian components was "unattainable".

The newspaper writes that most telecom equipment will have to be redesigned to meet the new requirements of domestic equipment, which is impractical. ANO TT reported that this could cause problems with the supply of equipment to government customers, the largest telecom operators, and critical information infrastructure (CII) entities.

The organisation warned that if the government's resolution is adopted in its current form, all decisions on the recognition of telecom equipment as domestic will be terminated from 1 December 2024. Thus, the country will have no domestic telecom equipment left, the industry representatives concluded.

Background: The Ministry of Economic Development of the Russian Federation predicts that the country's industrial production growth rate will halve to 2% in 2025.

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