The FritzBox from the manufacturer AVM is one of the most popular and user-friendly routers on the market. Numerous Telekom customers also use devices of this type to use their Internet and telephone connections. If you belong to this group, you should urgently take a look at the firmware of your FritzBox. If it is not up to date, you are at risk of losing an important function in just a few days.
As reported by Deutsche Telekom on its website, the company will be making a change to its in-house network on March 15, 2022. Anyone who has not installed the current firmware version 7.29 on their FritzBox at this point in time will no longer be able to make calls from that date. However, access to the Internet is retained. According to Telekom, the reason for this problem is a change that AVM introduced with firmware version 7.25.
Older firmware does not meet security standards
Since this update, AVM has been using the so-called TLS interface (Transport Layer Security) for encrypted communication, but transmits the media stream unencrypted via RTP (Real-Time Transport Protocol). According to Telekom, this does not correspond to the in-house security standards. Therefore, the company will no longer support telephony with this firmware version in the future. However, only users who already have firmware 7.25 or newer installed on their FritzBox are affected by the problem.
If you are using an older version of the system software, you will still have access to the telephone function. In particular, owners of older devices for which firmware version 7 is no longer available do not have to act. However, if your router supports the latest firmware, it is advisable to always keep it up to date. Because the FritzBox automatically downloads updates, if approved by you, chances are you’re already off the hook. If the latest firmware update is not yet available, you can start the installation manually: You can find details on the Telekom website.