Latest glitch adds to Vodafone’s woes in its largest market
Vodafone is not enjoying the best of times in Germany. Its CEO, Hannes Ametsreiter ostensibly left the company to pursue an alternative career earlier in June, after being confirmed in his post until “at least 2024” in February.
Former Microsoft exec Philippe Rogge took over at the end of June, after Vodafone Group’s CEO, Nick Read expressed himself dissatisfied with the performance in Germany, it’s largest market, when its financial year-end results were announced in May. Inside Digital reported that “Vodafone customers are fleeing in droves”.
Since then a number of other top execs have either jumped or been pushed. One of the biggest issues is that Vodafone is not seeing the expected return on investment from its massive acqusistion of Liberty Global’s cable assets in the country in 2019.
Pulling the plug
The glitch that started last week is on a far smaller scale, but embarrassing none the less. Vodafone customers in the commercial area of Renchen, a town in south-west Germany, reportedly had no network for several days after the power supply was turned off at the mast. The outage lasted from Friday 5 August to Tuesday 8 August after the Oberkircher Stadtwerke (municipal utility) pulled the plug, having not been paid for months, according to teltarif. It finally turned the supply off after multiple requests for payment and warnings were ignored.
Why the bills were not paid is unclear, but the running of the mast was outsourced two years ago and, according to the report, this is not the first time there have been problems obtaining payments since then. Vodafone is reportedly investigating and won’t comment in the meantime
Vodafone has stressed that the fiber optic supply in the fixed network was interrupted for a shorter time than the mobile network, where disruption was limited to a radius of about up to 3km around the mast. Consumers and businesses hit by the outage are not amused. The teltarif website quoted Wolfgang Panter from DP Solutions, which sells digital printing systems costing six-figures. He said that in the worst case, missed calls could result in “gigantic” damage and during the outage he didn’t even have access to email.
The report said it took 16 or 17 attempts for Panter to reach someone in Vodafone’s customer service who could explain the situation and that he got online again by borrowing a Telekom Deutschland SIM from an employee.
In July, customers in some parts of Germany complained about problems using DSL, cable and mobile phone services, according to ComputerBild. Hamburg was hit particularly hard by restrictions on DSL and TV reception, as well as on telephony. The official Vodafone fault forum said a defective cable was the cause.