Germany's cellular phone networks broke down over the holidays because they were unable to handle the flood of Short Message Service mailings.
Deutsche Telekom and Mannesmann, two German cellular phone networks, had to send out stop messages to callers, many of whom were using the mobile phones they had received as Christmas gifts for the first time.
A Mannesmann spokeswoman said the network could handle the daily SMS flow, but that holiday traffic had been too heavy to handle. Normal voice mobile phone service was not interrupted.
