Around 4 p.m. this afternoon, Germany experienced the biggest cellphone network failure to date. T-Mobile, current market leader in Germany, experienced a complete network failure and left 39.1 million people without a cellphone connection for about four hours. Between 7 p.m. and 8 p.m. this evening, first parts of the network came back online and accessible again.

In a press release, published on their web site, Guenther Ottendorfer, technical CEO of T-Mobile Germany said that the cause for the problem has been identified in form of a software problem in the Home Location Register (HLR). The HLR is responsible to establish a connection between the cellphone and cellphone radio stations.

Certain parts of the network are still experiencing system overloads and congestions, but those problems are currently being addressed and more than likely fixed within the next few hours.