Somaliland Needs Emergency Roaming, Backup Power and Telecom Coordination
In a crisis, a telecom outage can disable payments, ambulances, warnings and government coordination at the same time.
Networks carry more than conversation
Somaliland’s telecommunications networks support mobile money, family remittances, emergency calls, business payments and government coordination. In a conflict or maritime-security crisis, loss of connectivity would therefore become an economic and public-safety emergency within hours. Operators need continuity plans designed for simultaneous power, fibre, cyber and staffing disruptions—not routine equipment failure.
The International Telecommunication Union advises governments to develop national emergency telecommunication plans and assess the vulnerability of critical information and communications infrastructure. It also promotes emergency-roaming frameworks that allow users to connect temporarily to another operator when their home network is unavailable.
Competing networks need shared emergency rules
Somaliland’s operators should agree, under regulatory supervision, on emergency roaming, mutual repair assistance and priority access for hospitals, police, fire services, water agencies and humanitarian responders. The arrangement should activate only under defined conditions, preserve commercial records and include testing before a crisis.
Physical resilience comes next. Operators should map towers and switching sites that depend on the same power feeders, fibre routes or fuel depots. High-priority sites need longer backup-power endurance, protected fuel deliveries and spare parts stored in more than one city. Satellite terminals and microwave links can provide limited emergency backhaul where terrestrial fibre is cut, but capacity should be reserved for essential traffic.
Cyber continuity is equally important. Conflict invites denial-of-service attacks, destructive malware, misinformation and attempts to obtain customer-location data. Operators should separate critical network-management systems, use offline configuration backups, require multi-person approval for high-risk changes and establish secure channels for sharing threat indicators.
WARYATV Assessment
The government should create a national telecom emergency committee that includes operators, electricity providers, security agencies, hospitals and humanitarian organizations. Its mandate should be narrow and lawful: continuity, restoration and public warning—not political control of communications. Annual exercises should test a fibre cut, prolonged grid failure, cyberattack and mass displacement scenario. The public should also know how emergency messages will be authenticated when social media fills with false claims. In wartime, resilient telecoms are not a luxury service. They are the nervous system of the civilian economy.
Sources: ITU emergency-roaming framework; ITU National Emergency Telecommunication Plan guidelines; ITU 2026 emergency-telecommunications session; Somcable network description.
