Landshut – Fritz Eckle is furious. His father is angry too. For seven weeks now, the two men have had a heated argument with the telecom giant Telekom.
Damaged copper fork: Fixed line connection stopped for weeks
The reason for the disagreement: When optical fibers were placed near Bayerbach, a subcontractor commissioned by Deutsche Telekom destroyed the copper cable that served the fixed network connection of Fritz Eckel’s 90-year-old father. The elder lives alone and has been in isolation from the outside world since December 22 – because Telekom still hasn’t had a solution.
Just one black cable protruding from a thick blanket of snow along a country road about two kilometers from Bayerbach testifies to the Eckel family’s misery. Next to it is a gray fuse box with a flyer hanging in the front that says, “Turbo Internet for everyone! Federal Superfast Broadband Program”. However, at the moment, it is hardly possible to speak of “high speed”: the construction work on which the optical fiber cable was to be laid has not been completed.
Telekom: So many days of failure
And the copper cable running next to it – the only way Fritz Eckle Daddy uses to communicate over the phone – is still damaged. Telekom also maintains that it is a classified issue. This isn’t the first time that the 90-year-old has not worked. In an interview with our newspaper, El Kabir said that there were indeed failures in October and November of last year.
“These days only lasted eight days,” explains Fritz Eckle Sr. The pensioner is disappointed that the situation has not improved for seven weeks, although his son called Telekom right away. “I have been a Telekom customer for 70 years. I am disappointed that no one can help me and these failures keep coming back,” the official says.
The 90-year-old has a cell phone – but he’s got technical issues
This makes his everyday life even more difficult: Although his son bought him a cell phone shortly after the problem occurred in December, the 90-year-old has problems with technology. He has trouble turning the small buttons on and off the phone, and on the cell phone – despite the hearing aid – he can’t understand what the other end of the line is saying. Additionally, he suffers from heart problems and worries that it will be difficult to access at the moment. “In the current situation I’m a really poor dog,” Sr. Fritz Eckle says and hopes that the defect in his landline will be fixed soon.
Telekom has announced this multiple times, according to his son Fritz Eckle Jr. But every time it turned out that the phone was still broken in his father’s house. Fritz Eckel Jr. made calls to all branches of the telecommunications giant, from Hungary and Croatia to Mecklenburg-Vorpommern or Berlin.
“Telekom doesn’t seem to care”
Nobody can help him. “Or I wanted to,” says fritz Eckle grimly. Because after a stable network connection had not worked for seven weeks – and despite repeated inquiries – it hadn’t done anything, this suspicion arises. “It seems as if Telekom doesn’t care whether or not the 90-year-old bonds well with the outside world. Since my dad has a heart condition, it could mean life and death. It’s a real mess,” they say themselves.
Telekom’s answer: Technology should study the problem
The issue has been known to Telekom since December 22nd. When asked by our newspaper, Marianthi Kokini Hahn, spokeswoman for Telekom, she said, “Our technology is in the process of carefully studying the problem. We want to find a solution here as quickly as possible. At the moment it cannot say exactly what the problem is. above the ground “. Telekom understands the customer’s anger: “We are there for them,” says Kokkini-Hanne and confirms that the customer will be given credit for the downtime.
But Fritz Eckle Jr.’s confidence was scratched, and in response to his need, he also turned to the government of Lower Bavaria – but from there: he does not expect help. “The employee referred me to Article 78 of the Communications Act and confirmed that our case was a private matter. They were not interested. And then they hung up,” says Vilsheimer. After that factual phone call, he called the Federal Network Agency – from which point he actually obtained confirmation that the issue would be addressed. “I’m curious to see if something will happen in the end,” says Fritz Eckle Jr. Neither his father nor he wanted to lose hope.
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