Expert says telecom equipment of smaller firms bring risks

MOSCOW, Sep 8 (PRIME) -- Russian operators test telecom equipment from China and India, but its quality and the ability of producers to provide the necessary level of support carry risks related to network exploitation, independent telecom expert Alexei Slukin told PRIME on Friday.

“The operators do experiment with equipment from China and India. The problem is in incompleteness of the ecosystem and in the quality of the products,” Slukin said.

These are products of the second and third echelons. The second echelon, including Samsung, NEC, and ZTE, also comprises famous producers, but quality of their equipment and software as well as the products ecosystem are not very good.

Top producers, Nokia, and Ericsson, suspended supplies in 2022, while Huawei suspended them.

The third echelon covers all the other producers, the expert added.

“If hunger for equipment grows further, alternatives are few, only national,” Slukin said, adding that Russian firms now produce only small lots of equipment or only prototypes.

Mobile operator VimpelCom, working under brand Beeline, said the operator considers “all available alternatives, including work under forward contracts with Russian producers and cooperation with manufacturers of the second echelon from China.”

MegaFon said it has a sufficient stock of equipment, including base stations, to provide excellent services. “We always test samples of all new vendors, both Russian and foreign,” an operator representative said.

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