German Emergency Services Face Communications Failure on Nationwide Critical Communications Network

Germany experienced a major disturbance of it's digital critical ommunications network, the Federal Ministry of the Interior announced following a request by the German Press Agency. The extent and cause of the disturbance is still unclear.

"There is actually an error in the BOS digital radio network," said a spokesman for the German Federal Office for Digital Radio for authorities and organisations with security responsibility (BDBOS). "The BDBOS and all partners are working on root cause analysis with the highest priority to resolve the problem as quickly as possible."

Communication tools for the police, fire and rescue services

The BOS radio network is used by the police, fire and rescue services and covers 99.2 percent of the area of Germany with more than 5000 base stations."

According to a dpa survey of several positional centers and dispatchers of the Ambulance Service and the fire brigade, several states were affected. The Berlin Fire Department said it was also affected, but that the fire brigade is doing all it can to communicate using other communication systems. The Berlin police also reported a disturbance.

Berlin head of the German police union GdP, Stephan Weh, said:

"The far reaching collapse of digital broadcasting is a watershed moment for our security services, showing us how fragile our digital infrastructure is and how negligent it is to rely on monopoly solutions." Communications are now the most important tool. "Life and death can depend on them at the end of the day."

Network problems have caused interference with the German authorities' digital radio. On Wednesday night the responsible Federal Agency said it was resuming its investigation. There were no indications of a hacker attack. If you wanted to reach the police via the 110 line or the 112 fire and rescue service, you could dial the numbers during the two hour interruption.

Late Tuesday evening, the police and Ambulance Service issued an all-clear in several states, but it was unclear whether operations were going smoothly again. The Federal Office for Digital Radio said there was a fault in the BOS digital radio network. "During the course of this review, network problems were identified as the cause of the error and corrected." To date, numerous Base stations and dispatchers in different parts of the Federal Republic of Germany have been affected.

According to the interior minister of Bavaria, there were no major incidents or casualties until late evening due to the disturbance. Authorities and emergency responders used planned alternatives such as traditional analog or cellular radio to keep in touch, but those alternatives would work fine, the ministry said.

Other affected areas include Bremen, Brandenburg, Hamburg, Saxony, Saxony-Anhalt, Saarland and Thuringia. Germany's Federal Police also reported problems.

"At this time the German Federal Office for Information Security has no information regarding a cyberattack as the cause of the disturbance,"

said a spokeswoman for the authority in the evening.

article translated by Google Translate