StarHub users hit by internet outage on April 15 to get one-time 20% monthly fee rebate

SINGAPORE — StarHub customers who were affected by the major internet outage on Wednesday (April 15) can get a one-time 20 per cent rebate on their home broadband monthly fee, equivalent to six days of free home Wi-Fi service, the telecommunications company said on Thursday.

A website will be made available for affected customers to register for the rebate, StarHub said, adding that it will announce details soon.

On Wednesday, StarHub users across the island were hit by service disruptions lasting at least nine hours.

In a statement on Thursday, a StarHub spokesperson said that the service disruption that happened at about 11am on Wednesday for users in the north and northeast regions of Singapore was due to a fault in a piece of network equipment.

Later, in a separate and unrelated incident, StarHub discovered a network issue with its Domain Name Servers that serve home broadband customers. This took place around 3.50pm on Wednesday.

The affected services were restored at about 8.20pm on the same day.

Mr Peter Kaliaropoulos, StarHub’s chief executive officer, apologised for the service disruption and said that the company had taken immediate steps to prevent the incident from happening again.

“We are also cooperating fully with the Infocomm Media Development Authority (IMDA) in investigations and we welcome any infrastructure audit by IMDA as needed.”

Mr Kaliaropoulos added that the incident was not caused by outdated equipment, a capacity shortage or a cyber attack.

“Our network infrastructure is robust. We utilise hardware and software from global technology leaders and redundancies are built in as part of our extensive business continuity planning.”

He also reassured customers that StarHub’s network traffic is “well below available capacity” and that the telco is able to cater for high service levels to be delivered consistently.

“We will increase our efforts, review our processes, reinforce training initiatives and continue to be vigilant as robust network quality underpins our customers’ confidence in the services we provide,” he said.

IMDA said in a statement on Wednesday night that it took a "serious view of any service disruption to public telecommunications services, especially during the circuit breaker period, where many of us are working and studying from home".

The authority added that it had begun investigating the two service disruptions to StarHub’s internet services, and would not hesitate to take strong enforcement action should there be lapses on StarHub’s part.