Latvia Moves to Set Minimum Resilience Standards for Mobile Networks to Protect Public Safety Communications During Crises

Ministry of Transport, operators and LVRTC begin joint review of storm-related outages, with national roaming and generator-sharing among measures proposed to keep emergency communications online

Latvia's Ministry of Transport has opened discussions with the country's mobile network operators on establishing a minimum resilience standard for commercial networks, a move intended to safeguard communications for public safety officials and emergency responders during storms and other crisis events. The initiative follows a meeting on 26 August between the Ministry, representatives of the major mobile operators, and the Latvian State Radio and Television Centre (LVRTC), convened to review network performance during a recent storm that disrupted mobile coverage across parts of the country.

The meeting marked the first formal step in a wider assessment of how commercial mobile infrastructure performs under crisis conditions, and what regulatory or operational changes may be required to ensure continuity of service when it matters most to first responders and civil protection authorities. No formal conclusions were reached, and officials stressed that the process remains at an early, information-gathering stage.

Aleksandrs Beļajevs, Head of the Radio Network Department at Bite Latvija, said operators had compiled data on how their networks performed during the storm, including outage duration and root causes, as a basis for identifying where resilience could be improved. He indicated that the findings could ultimately feed into new legislation, though he cautioned that no concrete plan has yet been agreed and that the discussions are currently limited to exploring possible solutions.

Among the measures under consideration is the introduction of national roaming, which would allow subscribers of one mobile operator to connect via a competitor's network during a declared crisis, ensuring that critical calls—including those from or to public safety personnel—can still be completed even if a subscriber's home network is degraded or down. Beļajevs indicated that operators broadly support the concept and that its technical implementation would not present major obstacles.

Discussions also focused heavily on the role of energy resilience in sustaining network availability. Līga Krūmiņa, Technical Director at Tele2, noted that mobile network uptime during a crisis is closely tied to the reliability of the electricity supply, and pointed to inadequate vegetation clearance along high-voltage power lines as a contributing factor in the recent outages, calling for wider buffer zones to reduce the risk of storm-related power failures that can take base stations offline.

Uldis Tatarčuks, Chief Executive of Tet, said he had expected Latvia's Crisis Management Centre to take a stronger coordinating role during the storm response and argued that the centre requires additional financial and human resources to fulfil that function effectively in future emergencies. He said operators have agreed to submit proposals by specific deadlines covering both national roaming and improved coordination of backup generator deployment, including arrangements that would allow a single generator to restore service across all four operators' infrastructure at a shared site, rather than benefiting only one network. He added that closer coordination with the custodians of the state's crisis reserves would also be needed.

Mobile network operators have been asked to submit their formal proposals to the Ministry of Transport by 4 September, after which further steps toward a defined resilience framework are expected to be outlined.