On the night to Wednesday the nationwide rail service failed due to a GSM-R radio system outage. Tens of thousands of passengers were stranded. DB InfraGO announced an investigation.
Between 10:30 p.m. and 12:30 a.m. both passenger and freight traffic came to a halt. The outdated GSM-R technology from the 1990s failed after a scheduled component replacement.
Only after two hours could operations switch to backup technology. On Wednesday morning services ran largely normally, though with some cancellations.
Philipp Nagl, chairman of DB InfraGO, said: “From the current perspective the cause of yesterday’s digital railway radio GSM-R disruption was the scheduled replacement of a technical component.”
A similar outage had already caused hours-long delays in northern Germany in 2022. DB Systel GmbH is responsible for the IT services.
