Singtel fined S$1 million over outages — Channel NewsAsia
In Singapore, the Infocomm Media Development Authority (IMDA) fined telecommunications company Singtel S$1 million over mobile service disruptions in March that affected approximately 720,000 individual and corporate subscribers. Channel NewsAsia reports on the regulator’s decision.
Causes of the disruptions
The outages occurred on March 16, 18 and 19. The longest of them, on March 16, lasted about nine hours. Users began experiencing mobile connectivity problems at approximately 10:30. 4G network service was restored at around 13:30, while 5G services began to be restored from 14:45. 5G service was fully restored at about 20:00.
IMDA’s investigation found that the first outage was caused by a malfunction in the cooling system at one of Singtel’s switching nodes. Mobile network equipment overheated and shut down. According to the regulator, following scheduled maintenance, the company’s contractor failed to manually open a valve regulating the water supply. At the same time, Singtel did not actively monitor the valves and water flow in the cooling system.
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Problems after traffic rerouting
The disruptions on March 18 and 19 occurred after 5G traffic was redirected from the affected node to another Singtel switching node. The increased load, a disabled network packet optimizer and a software bug at the other node caused intermittent connectivity problems for some subscribers in the evening on both days.
IMDA stated that all three incidents could have been prevented and were not the result of a cyberattack. The regulator took into account the scale of the disruptions, but also Singtel’s full cooperation during the investigation, the gradual restoration of services and compensation for affected subscribers. The company provided compensation discounts of S$5 to S$10, while the total amount paid to consumers and business customers was about S$8 million.
Following the incidents, Singtel strengthened its maintenance procedures and cooling system monitoring, resolved issues at the other node and is conducting checks of network traffic switching in the event of failures. In December last year, the company was also fined S$1 million over a fixed-line service outage in 2024 that affected half a million users and emergency services.
