Some Singtel fibre broadband services down for hours; users in central, eastern S'pore affected

• Singtel said on the evening of June 8 that all its affected broadband services have been restored
• The hours-long disruption angered customers, many of whom were working from home
• Singtel said its engineers were still investigating the cause of the disruption

SINGAPORE — Some Singtel customers across Singapore grappled with an hours-long disruption to their fibre broadband services after an overnight maintenance session, vexing users who were working from home.

Some reported connectivity issues from as early as 2am on Tuesday (June 8).

In its latest update on Facebook around 6.15pm, the telecommunications company said that all its affected broadband services have been restored.

“We recognise that it has been a trying time as many of you are working from home and we are very sorry for the disruption.” 

The telco said on Facebook earlier on Tuesday, at 7.50am, that it had completed an overnight maintenance session for some of its fibre broadband customers.

“If you are not getting a connection, please perform a sequential reboot of all your routers,” it said.

Many customers said that they tried rebooting their routers many times, to no avail.

In an update at about 9.50am, Singtel said it was aware that some customers might be facing issues accessing their fibre broadband services.

“Please bear with us as our engineers work on resolving the issue.”

Around noon, the telco said that its engineers were refreshing affected fibre broadband connections progressively to resolve the issue.

It added that some customers might have their connections momentarily interrupted.

Singtel said that at about 2pm, around 30 per cent of affected connections had been restored. By around 2.50pm, 60 per cent of services were back online. 

At about 4.40pm, more than 80 per cent of them were up and running. Services were fully restored by around 6.15pm.

The issue affected Singtel customers in areas such as Sengkang, Punggol, Pasir Ris, Tampines, Ang Mo Kio, River Valley and Bukit Merah.

Singtel said that the trip-up affected customers in central and eastern Singapore, and its engineers were still investigating its cause. 

“We are taking this incident very seriously and are taking steps to review our processes to prevent a recurrence.”

The firm added that it would be reaching out to affected customers to offer them a 10 per cent discount on their broadband subscriptions this month. This will be reflected in their July bill. 

Affected customers who have Singtel postpaid mobile plans and received an SMS (short message service) message from the telco will also have their local mobile data charges waived for Tuesday.

One Singtel customer, who gave her name only as Ms Gwen, told TODAY that she rebooted her router more than 20 times. 

This was after she called Singtel at 7.30am and waited about an hour to get a response. “The Singtel customer officer said their back-end team was fixing the issue and asked me to reboot every 30 minutes,” said Ms Gwen, a human resources executive in her 20s.

She said that her internet connection was restored only around 3.25pm. She had earlier been tapping her mobile data plan so that she could work from home.

Singtel customer Francis Yee wrote on Facebook: “It is causing so much inconvenience, especially when everyone is WFH (working from home)... The whole morning, I have to use my phone hot spot.” 

Another customer Vivien Ong wrote: “This is really not acceptable! Many of us are working from home and some even had to resort to going back to the office.”

Other customers were upset that the maintenance session had been scheduled for a weekday, at a time when Singapore is in a phase of heightened alert against Covid-19, when many people are relying on internet connections at home.

Mr Ow Wai Kian said on Facebook: “I understand the need for maintenance activities on a network, but it's obvious you messed something up and now people have to suffer.” 

In response to queries from TODAY, the Infocomm Media Development Authority (IMDA), which regulates telcos, said that it was aware of the disruptions on Tuesday.

IMDA said it had required Singtel to “restore services expeditiously, and to keep affected users updated on recovery processes”.

“IMDA takes a serious view of any service disruption to public telecommunication services, especially when many are home.”

The authority has also started investigations into the service disruption, and will take enforcement action should there be lapses, it added.