"So far our suppliers have been unable to provide us with the chipsets that we need. As soon as they are available, which should be before the end of this year, we will start making such navigators," said Yevgeny Zhalkovsky, vice president of JJ Group, a Russian producer and dealer of GPS navigation equipment.
Russia's first one-band Glonass receiver was put on the market shortly before the New Year holidays, with the first batch of around 1,000 sets sold out immediately. A second batch was expected to arrive at the end of January.
Glonass (Global Navigation Satellite System), Russia's equivalent of the U.S. Global Positioning System (GPS), is designed for both military and civilian use and allows users to identify their positions in real time.
However, the producers of the system have come under pressure from First Deputy Prime Minister Sergei Ivanov, who on Wednesday said the Russian space agency Roscosmos should take responsibility for Glonass' operational shortcomings.
The minister, who oversees the military-industrial complex, said the satellite cluster does not provide 100% accessibility to Glonass services throughout Russia's territory, and that precision levels do not meet modern requirements.
According to various media sources the precision of location searches by GPS stands at one meter, while Glonass' precision varies between tens of meters.
A total of 9.88 billion rubles ($380 million) was allocated for Glonass from the federal budget in 2007, and 4.7 billion ($181 million) in 2006.
