The launch of Apple’s iPhone today seems to be quite successful - or maybe T-Mobile (which is the exclusive carrier partner for the iPhone in Germany) wasn’t quite good prepared. Many new iPhone owners here in Germany report that they are not able to connect to the internet. A quick call to T-Mobile’s support hotline revealed the secret behind this issue: the german EDGE Network, which is used by the iPhone instead of the more popular UMTS, simply broke down nationwide - one may suppose this was happening by overload.

So I for myself now wait what will be happening in the next hours to finally check out my new iPhone for it’s online features. Meanwhile I’m posting this with my older K800i, which connects fine via Vodafone and UMTS to the internet…

Update at 15.00 (3 pm): Finally my new iPhone connects to the Internet - obviously EDGE Network is up and (a little slowly) running again!

Second Update at 20.45 (8.45 pm): The network speed slows down again (compared to my K800i with Vodafone/UMTS), maybe all the new iPhone owners are trying out now their gadget in the evening hours. One interesting error message appears when I try to use the youtube service: my iPhone is telling me, that it needs an EDGE connection to show video streams. This looks like EDGE is still down - maybe T-Mobile is using GPRS Data Services in the moment to backup the lack of EDGE? This could explain the sloooooowwwww speeeeeeeeeeeedddddddddddd …..

Surfing a little around I found another interesting post about server problems with T-Mobiles website this morning. What is going on there? Are they selling so much iPhones? Or were they simply not professionally prepared?