LEO-satellites as a part of the state preparedness in Finland
Creating a framework for communications during state crisis
Empirical and theoretical research
Mika Säppi
2024-2025
This document presents a partial excerpt of the complete research. Certain information has been deliberately omitted or modified to protect national security interests and prevent disclosure of specific preparedness capabilities, methodologies, or protocols. The content provided herein is intended for informational purposes only and does not represent the full scope or detailed implementation of Finland's emergency preparedness systems.
All sensitive operational details, technical specifications, and strategic response protocols have been appropriately redacted in accordance with relevant national security regulations and information protection guidelines.
This research is being shared with the public to showcase our capabilities as a researching organization and to contribute to the broader understanding of satellite communications in crisis preparedness, while maintaining appropriate safeguards for sensitive information.
The need arises
Ongoing events in the world have shown us we should be preparing for a situation where conventional ways of civilian communications fail.
When the voices just can't be silenced
When the mobile network fails
During use peaks mobile network access points can be highly saturated, meaning high latency and restricted bandwidth. This effect multiplies when more end-users are packed into small areas where the mobile network wasn't designed to handle that amount of data transmission.
Tetra-networks have shown to be useful in transmitting official communications but are usually unavailable to civilian applications. Tetra-networks usually can't transmit data to serve the needs of broadcasters.
A Finnish company behind Virve (viranomaisverkko, official network), Erillisverkot oy has come up with a second generation Virve, called Virve2. This allows users to transmit data like you do with your own mobile network. This network comes with it's perks and faults: it's prioritized over civilian traffic but is served from the same antennas as the civilian networks. This makes it very useful for scenarios where crowds using network devices saturate the links, but makes it then susceptible to external influence.
All's good until...
Remote networks can be destroyed. In 2024, a Finnish town Janakkala had their telecommunications tower destroyed by cutting the ballast wires. This caused a temporary lack of mobile communications in the area that tower served. This incident has been listed among other cases of vandalism upon critical infrastructure in Finland. The perpetrator is yet to be caught. It's believed that the entity behind this act had no connections to hostile state actors.
If a group of youngsters is able to cause such damage to mobile infrastructure, what would a state-connected entity be able to do?
Preparing for the worst
Raja-Jooseppi border crossing station, December 2024
First consideration of LEO-systems
Starlink satellites were first tested in 2023 and 2024 in the western Finland. By then, Starlink hadn't allocated enough satellites in trajectories above Finland to provide a connection that would be reliable enough for mission-critical communications.
After these tests, Starlink has launched more satellites to the polar orbits. These satellites were supposed to provide better uptime for connections in the remote locations in Finland. These satellites were tested from December 2024 to March 2025 by Mika Säppi in the eastern border crossing stations against Russia. Mika was one of the few civilians in Finland to be allowed the use of satellite communications devices in the very presence of Russia. The distance to Russia was no more than one meter at shortest in these tests.
The goals for the project were assigned by a team of professionals from different backgrounds: a systems architect, head of preparedness and a technical producer. Field testing methods and goals were solely designed and assigned by Mika Säppi.
"I thought I'd have a hard time getting online."
Mika Säppi, 2024
Vartius border crossing station, December 2024 - January 2025
Starlink turns out to be quite good
The tests were conducted with having radio in mind, but also the needs of television live feeds were assessed and tested.
During the tests in three different border crossing stations, Starlink didn't have any issues connecting to the internet. Only minor headache was caused by Starlink's instructions to point the dish either northwest or southwest. The actual proper heading for the antenna is 0° north.
The quality of the network was better than expected: bandwidth was ample for even 4K-video streaming, meaning we could have a hundred audio streams for radio and we'd still have more than enough headroom.
Bandwidth was always at least 150 Mbps, but data transfer rates of even 350 Mbps were logged. Upload ranged from 20 Mbps to 35 Mbps.
Latency was very acceptable for a civilian satellite connection (median being from 50 ms to 55 ms). In terms of broadcasting, jitter adaptation can adapt to the nature of satellite networks nature of high jitter.
Vaalimaa border crossing station, February 2025
Why Starlink?
..., and why not a military-grade solution?
Starlink was chosen because we needed to find a system everybody knows how to use. The end-user could be anyone who happens to be the first getting to the place where something happens, while more technically-oriented personnel could be hours away (from the nearest mid-size city, there's almost a two-hour drive to the nearest border crossing point).
Another important consideration was availability. Starlink is sold basically in every city in many countries, meaning spare parts are easy to get.
A "military-grade" solution would not offer us anything we really need. Starlink managed to do very good even in the harsh conditions of Vartius, while the temperature went down to -27°C during the tests.
It's important to keep in mind the risks related to Starlink's state of origin. European equivalents are suggested for entities operating in the European Union. Testing of Airbus' OneWeb system is beginning in the late spring of 2025.
Even the satellites aren't invincible
Recognizing the risks and taking external factors into consideration.
The Sun.
Giving us headaches for the last 4,6 billion years.
In 2022, severe sunstorms made several Starlink satellites inoperable. However, the expected peak of the sun's 11-year solar flare cycle is in 2025. Solar flares are capable of causing great destruction to objects outside of the Earth's electromagnetic field.
Even more destructive than solar flares, is space debris. That is a great risk for all satellites because of the sheer amount of the debris and the speed of these particles. The amount of space debris is expected to rise exponentially because satellites breaking down due to debris impacts tend to create more debris. While we as humans do not have power over the solar flares, we have methods of clearing some of the space debris from the satellite trajectories.
Coming down from the space, we have the weather. While this is again something the humans have no power over, it's easier to predict than the effects of space debris or solar flares. Because we know that liquid water is one of the most effective attenuators of gigahertz signals, we can expect the signal to suffer from greater jitter and reduced bandwidth during rainfalls or snowfalls that occur during the fall and spring (or anytime when the snow is forming rather low in the atmosphere and has liquid water in it).
Last, there's the issue with us humans: someone will sometimes benefit from making communications more difficult. Some entities have more capabilities than the others.
Thinking ahead
This test could provide a foundation for standardizing satellite communications needs for broadcasting entities. The standard set could guide the requirements for bandwidth, ping and jitter, and could even extend to defining how should the signal be routed.
The bigger picture
These tests were conducted in three border crossing stations and one closed crossing point. Distance from the northernmost crossing point Raja-Jooseppi to the southernmost Vaalimaa is around 860 km (1180 km by car).
While leaving hundreds of kilometers of empty space in between testing locations, the four testing locations provide a clear picture of what can be expected throughout Finland.
One reason for testing at the border crossing stations was to find the point where the presence of Russia is enough to cause the service to become unavailable. As of writing this document, Starlink is and remains unavailable in Russia. No such boundaries were to be found.
Final words
While preparing for the worst may seem scary and overwhelming, it doesn't mean anything bad is necessarily going to happen.
Being prepared for the worst means we're prepared for anything.
This report was authored by Mika Säppi, whose great ambition is to find the most reliable methods of communicating through times it seems impossible.
This research has been conducted by the Finnish Broadcasting Company (Yle) in collaboration with Huoltovarmuuskeskus (National Emergency Supply Agency) and Traficom.
Mika Säppi has presented this research to the Finnish Ministry of Transport and Communications on 8th of April, 2025.
