Vodafone outage in Frankfurt leaves around 28,000 customers offline

A damaged cable left up to 28,386 Vodafone customers in Frankfurt and neighbouring Bad Vilbel without cable television, internet and landline telephone on Tuesday, 27 October. Vodafone expected the fault to be fixed at around 3am on Wednesday, according to the Frankfurter Rundschau.

What happened

The Frankfurter Rundschau reports that on Tuesday afternoon around 28,000 Vodafone customers in the Frankfurt and Bad Vilbel area lost their cable connections. Vodafone told the paper that up to 28,386 customers were affected. The outage covered all three services that run over the cable network: television, internet and fixed-line telephony, known in German as Festnetz.

The problem centred on a Betriebsstelle (an operating site, or network facility) in Ginnheim, a district in the north-west of Frankfurt. According to Vodafone, this site connects the affected customers to the company’s fibre-optic cable network, and it was temporarily out of service. The company first described the cause as an Anbindungsfehler, meaning a connection fault, and later blamed “a cable damage on the feeder route to this operating site”. Citing the regional broadcaster Hessenschau, the newspaper says the outage began on Tuesday afternoon. Vodafone said the damage had probably happened during construction work.

In a later update on Tuesday evening, the Frankfurter Rundschau quoted a more detailed explanation from Vodafone. The company said it suspected that a Spülbohrung (a horizontal drilling method used to lay pipes and cables underground without digging a trench) had damaged the cable system of another network operator, which also carries Vodafone’s cable. If that suspicion is confirmed, a new Rohrverband (a bundle of protective ducts for cables) has to be provided, and the fibre-optic cable then has to be pulled through it again. Vodafone said the work was being carried out at full speed.

Vodafone gave its expected end time in its Störungsdashboard, the outage dashboard for business customers on its website, where it listed an “expected end of the disruption” at around 3am on Wednesday.

What it means for you

If you live in Frankfurt or Bad Vilbel and receive TV, broadband or a landline through a Vodafone cable connection, you may have been among those affected. The Frankfurter Rundschau does not list which streets or neighbourhoods lost service, beyond naming the Ginnheim site as the point of failure. Customers on other providers were not mentioned as affected in the report, although the damaged cable system belongs to another network operator.

Based on what the source reports, here is what to check:

• Whether your service is back. Vodafone’s expected repair time was around 3am on Wednesday. The company also said the timing depended on whether its suspicion about the drilling damage was confirmed, so the end time was an estimate, not a guarantee.
• Vodafone’s outage information. The company published its estimate on the Störungsdashboard for business customers on its website. If your connection is still down, check Vodafone’s own channels for the latest status.
• Your landline. Because fixed-line telephony was part of the outage, a home phone running over the cable connection would not have worked during the disruption. If you rely on a landline, keep a charged mobile phone available until you are sure the service is stable.

The Frankfurter Rundschau does not say whether Vodafone will offer compensation or credits to affected customers, and it gives no information on any costs or deadlines for customers.

What to watch next

The key open question in the report is whether Vodafone confirms that drilling work damaged the other operator’s cable system. If it does, the company says a new duct bundle must be installed and the fibre-optic cable pulled through again, which is the work that determines when full service returns. At the time of the newspaper’s first report, it was still unclear when the fault would be fixed, and the later 3am estimate was described by Vodafone as provisional.

Source: Frankfurter Rundschau