[qilo]

"Neighbouring Finland offered an analogue telephone exchange as a gift and the Estonian government declined, [...]"

In 1997 even to think about an "upgrade" to an analogue system is a negligence. Estonia already had 3 GSM networks in a country with a population of 1,400,000.

At the time [May 1997] of Ritabell's entering the Estonian market, there were about 64,500 GSM subscribers in the country. 53,000 belonged to EMT and 11,500 to Radiolinja, [...] [0]

EMT (Eesti Mobiiltelefon) claims even bigger numbers:

By 1996, EMT had 100,000 subscribers. [1]

[0] https://books.google.lt/books?id=SrFXo6qDRjcC&pg=PA152

[1] https://www.telia.ee/en/uudised/celebrating-25-years-of-mobi...