Rusnano, Russia’s nanotech giant, Tomsk-based Micran, a major electronics manufacturer, and Finland’s Nokia Solutions and Networks (NSN) are shutting down Wireless Technology Center (WTC), their joint LTE base station facility in Tomsk.
Russian media have offered the lack of legal endorsement by national regulators as an explanation for the move. A year ago WTC equipment was indeed formally denied the status of a “Russian-made product” under Russian law. With NSN then owning 75%, the Siberian production capacity was considered “foreign.”
CNews.ru, for one, reported earlier this month that despite the high hopes of the partners last July when Rusnano bought into the JV – thus bringing NSN’s shareholding down to 50%, on a par with Rusnano and Micran’s combined – the consortium has nonetheless failed to get their product the coveted green light.
“Russian-made” status is required to deploy 2.3-2.4GHz LTE networks, as stated in a bylaw adopted by Roskomnadzor, the federal telecom market regulator, in 2010.
But there are also other, more important reasons for shutting down the project. In an exchange with East-West Digital News, Maria Lipovka, a spokesperson for Micran, said that the move was primarily due to a “lack of demand for the base stations that the Tomsk-based JV had been making – an objective market reason.”
Further, as a spokesman for Rusnano explained to EWDN, the reasoning behind the nanotech giant’s decision to bow out lay elsewhere: “As a nanotech-focused company, Rusnano was no longer interested in the investment after the localized IC manufacture component had been removed from the project. We didn’t see the ‘nano’ element in the effort any more, and therefore we opted for earlier exit at the entry price,” he said.
Micran is buying the Rusnano stake back for its entry price of 9.6 million rubles (about $270,000), and pledged last week to re-employ at its existing facilities all staff now being laid off. The Siberians are hardly at a loss, however. Last month the Tomsk company launched the joint Russo-Italian project “Juncta” to develop wireless communications systems and offer regional operators solutions and services; work on the new Italian-based production is now gearing up.