The measure brings domestic roaming into Estonia’s crisis-response framework. It covers the country’s three main mobile operators: Elisa, Tele2 and Telia. The Riigikogu adopted the new Crisis Situation and National Defence Act in June, and it enters into force on October 1. The legislation brings several existing crisis and national-defence rules into a single framework.

But there is an important distinction. This is not intended for routine outages or temporary disruption after an autumn storm. The mechanism targets much more serious situations. It applies when mobile infrastructure suffers prolonged or high-impact damage and restoring normal service will take time.

One network fails, another can step in

Under the new framework, the Estonian government can activate domestic roaming during an emergency or wartime situation. Once activated, a customer whose home network is unavailable can use another operator’s mobile network for essential communications.

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“This will work across the entire territory of Estonia. Since we are so small, it does not make sense to do this on a county-by-county basis. People’s phones will select whichever operator is working in that location if their home network is not working,” Ministry of Justice and Digital Affairs spokesperson Mart Laas said.

There is one practical catch. Estonia’s official crisis guidance says phones may not always move to another network automatically. Some users may need to disable automatic network selection and manually choose an available operator. Service quality may also be lower than under normal conditions. But the priority is continuity: calls, messages and enough mobile data to access essential information.

Laas stressed that the system is not intended to become a fallback for every disruption.

“It seems disproportionate to activate such a large mechanism because of storms. The aim is for situations where there is a war or a very serious state of emergency in which a telecommunications company’s network has suffered significant damage, is out of service and will clearly take a long time to restore,” he said.

Resilience starts before roaming

Domestic roaming does not replace conventional network resilience. It sits on top of it.

Tele2 has around 1,500 telecommunications antennas across Estonia. The operator says its crisis planning already includes redundant external connections, batteries and generators.

“We need to have redundant external connections, batteries must be ready, generators — these are things we have worked on over the years,”

Tele2 technology director Tanel Sarri said.

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“The most important nodes are backed up by generators, while smaller sites have battery backup in order to ensure nationwide coverage, primarily outdoors.”

That distinction matters. Emergency roaming only helps if another operator’s infrastructure is still functioning. Backup power, transmission redundancy and resilient network design therefore remain the first line of defence.

Estonia is following a wider resilience trend

Estonia’s approach fits a broader shift in telecom policy. Governments increasingly treat mobile networks as critical infrastructure rather than simply commercial connectivity services.

Ukraine provides the clearest recent example. In March 2022, Kyivstar, Vodafone Ukraine and lifecell introduced national roaming. It allowed subscribers to move to another network when their own became unavailable. The system began in areas affected by Russia’s full-scale invasion and later expanded nationwide.

READ MORE: What is National Roaming?

The concept is now receiving wider international attention. In June 2026, the International Telecommunication Union launched guidance for governments and operators developing national emergency roaming frameworks. The guidance covers the regulatory, operational and coordination arrangements needed when individual networks are damaged or fail.

Finland illustrates another part of the same resilience strategy. Its telecom rules place extensive obligations on operators around backup systems, redundancy and managing serious communications disruptions. Estonia is adding another layer. When one network’s own protections are no longer enough, rival infrastructure can become part of the national fallback.

Final thoughts

The interesting part of Estonia’s move is not roaming itself. Mobile operators have used roaming technology for decades. What changes here is its role.

A mechanism normally associated with travelling abroad is being repurposed as national resilience infrastructure.

That will not make Estonia’s mobile networks failure-proof. It is also deliberately not designed to solve ordinary coverage problems or short outages. But it removes one uncomfortable dependency. In a serious crisis, a customer’s ability to communicate does not necessarily have to end simply because one operator’s network does.

Ukraine demonstrated what national roaming can do after a crisis has already started. Estonia is doing something different—and arguably more significant from a preparedness perspective. It is putting the rules and technical arrangements in place beforehand.

The wider telecom trend is shifting from “How quickly can my network recover?” toward “How much of the communications ecosystem can remain usable when part of it fails?”

Estonia is building for that second question.