Many mobile customers of Deutsche Telekom and its subsidiary Congstar had problems making calls from their cell phones on Tuesday. There are “occasionally impairments in incoming and outgoing mobile phone calls,” said the group. For example, it can take a long time to set up a call.
The disruption affected people who wanted to use the very common mobile phone standard LTE (also known as 4G), wanted to communicate via SMS or wanted to listen to their cellphones. Telekom spoke of an “internal software error”. However, this does not affect the use of mobile data or emergency calls.
In some cases, patience helped those affected with Apple smartphones: After about 20 seconds, these cell phones automatically switch to the much older 2G mobile communications standard, and then telephoning can be successful. The group referred owners of smartphones with the Android operating system to instructions on how to temporarily disable telephony via LTE.