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.
It does not matter what germany needs. Nobody cares what germans think or like or want.
What matters is what the german ruling class wants, as they are the only ones who get a say. They are positively slavering for war with Russia.
Americans, who in 2026 basically don’t have a passenger rail network, criticizing how “old” the German passenger rail network is… LMAO
In Germany, like practically everywhere else in Europe, you can go from any city to any other city by train and including medium sized and sometimes small sized towns and in the major countries (Germany, France, Italy and Spain but, notably, excluding the UK) there are extensive high-speed rail networks.
P.S. That said, the Germans can’t invest in it anymore because they are too busy getting ready for war with Russia as directed by the Anglo-Americans, and they are short on money after the sanctions to Russia and the skyrocketing cost of energy after the Anglos blew up the NordStream. Looking at them from Italy, Schadenfreude is the word that comes to mind…
Europeans like being slaves.
What Europeans? We are different and we vote differently. Some of us, Italy for example, have been voting to regain the sovereignty that we lost at the end of WWII. We are vassals both to the Americans, who militarily occupy us since 80 years, and to the EU (which means Germany and France and used to mean the UK too until they left), which we NEVER voted to join.
Berlusconi was our Trump but he actually tried to do what he promised (getting us out of the EU and the € and closer to Putin’s Russia of whom he was a great friend) and Germany, France and the UK organized a coup WHICH THEY (Merkel and Sarkozy) LATER EVEN ADMITTED TO WITH NO CONSEQUENCES.
Years later we voted for the Movimento 5 Stelle (5 Star Movement) with the same program: get us out of the EU and the €. They sold out.
The latest one has been Meloni, who changed tune the moment she was elected.
The exact same swindle has just happened in the US with Trump. You voted for no more wars and for America First and you got the exact same foreign policy and Israel First; just with a bit less LGBTQ, DEI, feminism, illegal immigration, “green” and the rest of that shit…
Don’t think for a moment that something different would happen in Germany with AfD, in France with RN or in the UK with Reform UK.
And last but not least: WHITE AMERICANS (but I am repeating myself, it’s not a coincidence that white Americans are the only non hyphenated Americans…) ARE EUROPEANS TOO in case you have forgotten.
Good one, except I think you are probably underestimating the difficulty of introducing a revolutionary program in the face of trained public servants whose own welfare is tied to the continuation of destructive policies.
That chap in Argentina (I can’t pronounce or spell his name) seems to have achieved some degree of success, although I haven’t heard much about him lately. And I think Trump has achieved some things, although he may have been sucked in to some extent by Jewish friends and associates in this latest episode in the Persian Gulf.
Don’t ever give up.
The cost of the guests relaxing in the back bedroom.
The German federal government spent €24.8 billion ($28.5 billion USD) on refugee and migration-related services in 2025.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/1108234/refugees-asylum-federal-expenditure-germany
And some of the guests display interesting cultural tastes.
Germany: Turkish migrant won’t be deported or placed in prison despite raping multiple ponies in Bavariahttps://rmx.news/article/germany-turkish-migrant-wont-be-deported-or-placed-in-prison-despite-raping-multiple-ponies-in-bavaria/
All the Europeon rulers are singlemindedly focused on going to war with Russia. The only party in Germany that has any common sense is the one the rulers want to ban.
AfD
Every European leader believe Russia will invade the whole Europe.
Its funny and facinating. War with NAto. R U joking?
Even if Russia invade and conquer Europe, the very hardest part is
keeping on occupying a country or countries.
Europeans are digging their own graves by spending unproductive
massive defence budget.
It’s becoming plainer and plainer that Russia is already at war with NATO. The Ukrainians are the foot soldiers.
Who would want Europe anyway.
Germany squandered the peace dividend on social welfare.
To be fair, unification was super expensive too.
They are united subordinate to US.
The US squandered the peace dividend on wars.
As long as there is taxation, the state will provide welfare. The question is to whom. In Europe, the people share the welfare with corporations. In the US, corporations monopolize the welfare.
Well 2G was “good enough” but obviously no more. I am surprised at the Germans. Next thing you know they’ll tell us Swiss chocolate only contains 10% cacao.
2G? My country disbanded the 3G network years ago – it was chaos then because so many emergency services used 3G devices. Same issue – lack of foresight by business leaders who were run by beancounters and salesmen.
Mertz will no doubt blame Russian hackers.
Der Morgenstund hat gold im mund
If you take the list of the top 20 German corporations by market cap back in 1997 you will see DT, Siemens, BASF, Benz, SAP, Volkswagen, BMW, Bosh, Adidas, etc…
If you look at the same list today, it is all the same names, with just some changes in the ranking order within the list.
That is all you need to know about Germany’s mercantilism and crony capitalism.
At least their companies make the stuff of modern life, meanwhile, the magnificent seven just charge rent or enjoy de facto monopoly positions stateside.
No doubt Deutsche Telekom sought sweetheart deals that locked up and stifled progress.
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.
Internet speeds for people in larger cities is great. Fiber is everywhere now and its rare that I can’t pull the 400 Mbits that I pay for.
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.
They were updating 2G not migrating to 5G!
That was sarcasm about it being ok if it had been a 5G system.
I know what happened; I worked on Motorola designs for 2 and 3 and 4G systems.
However, 2G may actually be more secure in that they are the only ones still able to use it?
Thoughtful you are!
Not when updates to it are hard to come by, because everybody else has already moved on.
And the software update is hardly the only thing plaguing DB (and Germany). Anecdotally, it’s just the tip of the iceberg.