Elisa recommends reviewing your language preferences before next week

As part of the Estonian Defence Forces' military exercise "SIIL", the state will begin testing all available channels of threat notification next week, including alarm sirens, app alerts and location-based hazard alert SMS notifications sent to all people in Estonia in cooperation with mobile operators.  

To ensure that the SMS message reaches you in a language you can understand, select the preferred communication language in your mobile operator's self-service. As it will take about a day for any changes to take effect, Elisa recommends doing this before next week. 

Sending alerts in the user's preferred language is essential, as current practice shows that sending a message in a language that the recipient does not understand significantly increases the workload of the national hotline 1247 and the 112 emergency number, as the message’s content needs to be translated to its recipients. This in turn may affect the work of responding services and slow down the delivery of assistance. 

Language preferences are determined in the operator's databases and are usually correct by default, according to the language of the user contract. However, problems may occur with employer numbers, especially if they are not associated with the user. Although you can change your preferred language at any time, we recommend not leaving it to the last minute, as it will take 24 hours for the change to take effect. 

You can find instructions on how to update your language preferences here: 

The location-based hazard alert SMS is part of the Estonian integrated alert system called EE-ALARM, which currently consists of a siren network, location-based hazard alert SMS, "Eesti.ee" and "Be prepared!" mobile apps, text banners on the ETV and ETV+ channels and an RDS text on the Vikerraadio radio channel.