Irtea

History

2024: Construction of a factory for the production of base stations for 4 billion rubles

Irteya, a member of the MTS group, is building a factory for the production of 5G and 4G base stations.  President MTSVyacheslav Nikolaev told about this project in mid-April 2024.

Irteya really negotiated with the Tomsk company Mikran. However, these plans were revised, and recently our "daughter" decided to develop production on its own site. At the moment, it is being prepared, - he said in a conversation with Vedomosti (the article was published on April 17, 2025).

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According to Nikolaev, the project will be implemented jointly with partners, which will invest more than 4 billion rubles in it by 2027. The names of the partners were not disclosed, but it is known that earlier in 2024 the investment fund Advanced Technologies became the co-owner of Irtea.

The production of base stations will begin in the second or third quarter of 2024. According to the forecasts of the head of MTS, it is planned to produce 10-20 thousand base stations per year at the new enterprise. By the end of 2024, about 1,000 copies are expected to be produced.

Irteya will create mobile base stations 4G/5G with OpenRAN open architecture. The company is going to allocate 5.6 billion rubles for the development of telecom equipment and attract about 5.4 billion rubles of budget funds until 2026.

According to a newspaper source in one of the telecommunications equipment companies, the OpenRAN architecture has always been opposed by market leaders such  as Ericsson, Nokia,  Huawei, who create a closed proprietary product. But this principle is suitable for the operators themselves and small companies that can independently create separate elements of the network and join the development at any time, the source explained^[1]

2023

The transition of dozens of developers from Skoltech

About 30-35 developers of base stations on open architecture (Open Radio Access Network, OpenRAN, which became known on November 20, 2023, are moving to the Irteya company of the MTS group from Skoltech.

Irteya continues to increase resources and is recruiting developers and engineers in the open market who have experience in creating solutions for mobile communications, MTS explained to Kommersant, adding that "there is no talk of buying a team."

Several dozen developers of base stations based on the OpenRAN architecture joined Irteya

The general director of Irtea from November 21, 2023 will be Dmitry Lakontsev, who "accepted the offer to join the team, which will seriously strengthen the project." Earlier, Lakontsev headed the competence center of the National Technological Initiative on the basis of Skoltech.

According to the publication, Skoltech could not find funds to co-finance 50% of its own developments (necessary to obtain state subsidies), so the institute abandoned plans to create OpenRAN base stations. Instead, it will undertake research on 5G Advanced and 6G as part of the road map "Modern and promising mobile networks for 2030." Work on these tasks is already underway, Skoltech reported in November 2023.

MTS structures are interested in the intellectual rights of Skoltech, which are related to the development of equipment based on OpenRAN, sources say. According to one of the interlocutors, Skoltech intends to establish a new legal entity, transfer patents to it, and then sell it to the investor. The institute confirmed that they plan to commercialize these rights, but "this is not a task of today."

Earlier, the international alliance of telecommunications equipment developers OpenRAN suspended the membership of Skoltech and MTS. The idea of ​ ​ the alliance is to jointly develop equipment for 5G networks and subsequent generations of communication based on an open architecture.^[2]

Creating Open Architecture Base Stations

On September 1, 2023, it became known that Irteya, a subsidiary, MTS is implementing a project to create its own mobile communication base stations 4G 5G and with open OpenRAN architecture. The equipment will help eliminate the shortage of foreign solutions that has formed in the current geopolitical situation.

According to the Vedomosti newspaper, 5.6 billion rubles will be allocated for the development of Irteya base stations. Another 5.4 billion rubles will be budget financing in the period from 2023 to 2026. Such figures are indicated in the document "Modern and Promising Mobile Networks," which provides for the development of the telecommunications industry in Russia until 2030.

Irteya is implementing a project to create its own mobile communication base stations with an open architecture

It is planned that Irteya will organize the production of equipment in September 2024. By June 2026, the company intends to reach the volume of supplies of approximately 20 thousand units per year. TMT Consulting analysts believe that Irteya will supply base stations primarily in the interests of the MTS operator. The prospects for scaling up production will depend on the quality of the equipment and whether it will be compatible with existing solutions.

Market participants say that theoretically, other operators will be able to use Irteya base stations. One of the experts also admits that the manufacturer can organize the export of equipment to the CIS and BRICS countries. It is difficult to assess whether the developer will have enough 11 billion rubles to organize the production of domestic base stations. Vedomosti reports that on the telecom market it all depends on at what stage the development is. If the company creates stations from scratch, there won't be enough funding. Thus, Irteya can partially use foreign components and imported software.^[3]

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