Germany’s entire train system drops for over 2 hours. Freight trains down for over a day.
A German Idyll – Not a Single Train
Eurointelligence: On Tuesday late evening, the entire German railway system collapsed. Nothing moved for two hours. Deutsche Bahn’s 2G mobile communications system clapped out after a software update. This is the system used by railway companies to alert train drivers to emergencies, like people on tracks, or signal failures. An emergency backup system was eventually activated. Tens of thousands of passengers got stranded overnight.
Worse was the impact on freight rail. Twenty-four hours later, around half of Germany’s freight trains were still stranded throughout the country, with estimates that it would take several days to clear up the logjam.
The telecoms system concerned is GSM-R, from the era of 2G communications – the 1990s. Most European rail companies have switched systems.
A Technical Component Swap
ABC News reports the outage was the result of a problem with the GSM-R digital communication system used for internal communication on the railway network.
ABC News: The head of the operator’s DB InfraGO infrastructure division, Philipp Nagl, said that the cause appeared to have been “the scheduled swap of a technical component.” He did not elaborate.
“We are analyzing with the highest priority how exactly this led to the fault,” Nagl said in a brief statement, adding that the company apologizes to its customers for the disruption.
Deutsche Bahn said it was offering taxi and hotel vouchers and, where possible, putting trains in place for would-be travelers to sit in while they waited. But passengers complained of a lack of information, hotel rooms were not available everywhere, and some travelers’ journeys stretched through the night.
The breakdown came after years of increasingly frequent complaints about train delays and service interruptions.
The European Union’s most populous country has a railway network totaling some 33,400 kilometers (20,750 miles) in length, with 5,400 train stations and used by an average 50,000 trains per day. DB InfraGO says that makes it Europe’s biggest network.
“That all rail traffic in Germany comes to a halt because of a technical defect is a new low in already poor operating quality,” Oliver Krischer, the regional transport minister in North Rhine-Westphalia state, Germany’s most populous, told dpa.
Germany’s Internet Service Sucks
I typed the above headline into a search engine and got this amusing reply.
You are definitely not alone in that frustration. Germany’s digital infrastructure consistently ranks surprisingly low (often 30th to 50th globally) compared to its European neighbors.
Users frequently complain about high prices, slower-than-advertised speeds, high latency, and poor rural coverage.
Why the Service Struggles
- Outdated Infrastructure: Historical decisions in the 1990s favored upgrading existing copper lines over laying fresh fiber-optics. Millions of households still rely on decades-old coaxial or DSL lines.
- Low Competition: A fragmented regulatory environment has historically limited competition and made it difficult for newer providers to challenge dominant networks like Deutsche Telekom.
- Speed Discrepancies: Studies show that a significant portion of German broadband and mobile users rarely receive half of the maximum speeds promised in their contracts.
Showdown With Trump Coming Up
The vaunted German export machine is crumbling just as its ancient technology infrastructure is crumbling and on its last legs.
Note that Trump wants Germany to spend 5 percent of GDP on military spending.
However, the likelihood that Germany spends 5 percent of GDP on military spending is roughly 0.0 percent. Germany desperately needs spending elsewhere.
Put me down for 1.0 to 2.0 percent on military spending of which all but 0.5 percent will be smoke and mirrors.
Trump will howl, but Germany desperately needs infrastructure updates and can’t afford a dime for what Trump wants.
A big NATO clash is on the immediate horizon.
Moreover, paying for these needed infrastructure improvements will not be easy.
Ultimately consumers will pay the price for decades of neglect and Germany’s export mercantilism.
I am recommending that the Greatest Nation on Earth should reduce Military Spending by, say, 100%.
Sounds like the good ole usa and germany have the same issues.
My MOBILE DATA service from my Verizon Cell phone, while sitting in our Diesel Pusher RV (Camping or staying with Friends on their properties) is quite often faster in upload/download speeds compared to Home Modem/Router setups from companies like Spectrum and so on.
America sucks, too. We live full-time in our Marathon Diesel RV Pusher with Detroit Diesel Power plan, 12KW Generator, Inverters and 8 Deep Cell 6Volt house batteries – – – we can operate with “Shore Power” for weeks off-grid, hidden in Forests….
Internet Speeds are faster in PORTUGAL and SPAIN than here in the USA! We live there half time.
Germany seems to have the worst cellular networks in Western Europe. I would spend a lot of time on 3G until the pandemic, when 4G was ubiquitous even in Latin America. Not by my own anecdotal experience, but from the industry reports, it seems that 5G was deployed better than 4G. The lame duck honor for slow deployment of 5G seems to fall on the UK.
So it would have been okay if the shut down occurred updating a new 5G system?
Too many folks expect software and modern technologies to be magical.
However, 2G may actually be more secure in that they are the only ones still able to use it?
Thoughtful you are!