There were only two means of electronic communication in the German Army: telephone and radio. Telegraph communications were abandoned in 1910. By 1914, the intent was to provide each army corps with a company, and each numbered army with a battalion, of telephone specialists. At the beginning of the war, there were nine signal battalions. While this might seem a robust system, many problems existed in the infancy of communications. There were radios but these were large and cumbersome, scarce, and had very limited range. In addition, the distribution of the radios was haphazard. The radio equipment was not the same at all HQ and was not always compatible. The Telefunken equipment was more modern and had a range of 250 to three hundred kilometers. There was also the older style Poulsen system that had a range of one hundred kilometers. These two different types of radio systems were not compatible and could not communicate with each other. Each of the numbered armies on the right flank therefore had two radios in its HQ, one of each kind. There was, however, only one radio at the OHL. This highest HQ had one large radio station that was motorized. There were also three fortresses on the Western front (Metz, Strassburg, and Köln) that had strong stationary radio sets capable of transmitting at ranges up to one thousand kilometers. Each numbered army had two large radios that were horse drawn. Army corps active or reserve did not have a radio; army corps only had a telephone detachment. In the cavalry, the corps-level HKK had no electronic communications at all—the cavalry division had two mobile Telefunken radios and a telephone squadron. These two radios consisted of one large one like the army-level radio and one smaller, more mobile, that had a range of only eighty kilometers.
Unlike the modern-day standard practice, communication in the German Army of August 1914 was established from front to rear. Divisions had no communications troops. Messages among divisions and army corps were designed to be handled by dispatch rider or motorcar. Army and corps did have telephone equipment. It might not have all been standard, but it did function. What was needed for that to happen was for wire communications to be established between army and army corps HQ. The operative word is wire. Phone lines not only had to be constructed, but it required wire; lots and lots of wire. As the distances between units in August 1914 expanded, the length of wire required metastasized. The size of the army corps telephone detachments varied widely. Ninth Army Corps had five wire construction platoons and 160 kilometers of wire. Second Army Corps had only four platoons and 128 kilometers of wire. The Reserve Army Corps had a much smaller footprint, with only three construction platoons and 72 kilometers of wire.