An ongoing broadband outage that has affected about 5,000 users in Singapore is expected to be fixed by Sunday (19 April) morning, said a telecommunications infrastructure provider
Its technical teams are currently on-site working to restore service, said NetLink Trust (NLT), which owns and operates Singapore’s nationwide fibre network infrastructure.
Source: Glenn Carstens-Peters on Unsplash
On Saturday (18 April), hundreds of users reported service outages on Downdetector, affecting major local telcos such as Singtel, M1 and StarHub.
Singtel’s reports started spiking at 10.37am, with 205 issues reported.
112 reports were made about StarHub at 10.33am, while M1’s reports jumped to 87 at 10.50am.
The majority of the issues reported were about broadband internet.
At 11.45am, Singtel acknowledged the issues in a Facebook post, saying that it might be related to “some on-site construction activities”.
Source: Singtel on Facebook
Responding to a customer’s comment on Facebook, M1 said NLT had informed the telco of a “fibre network disruption” that occurred from 10.40am.
Source: Facebook
At 2.50pm, Singtel updated that NLT had informed them that the disruption had affected users in Ang Mo Kio, Bishan, Sengkang and Punggol.
Its engineers were working closely with NLT to restore services.
Source: Singtel on Facebook
StarHub said on Facebook at 5.15pm that the issue was due to a “cable cut” affecting some locations across Singapore.
Source: StarHub on Facebook
At 7pm, it added that service are expected to be restored by Sunday morning.
In a statement on its website, NLT said at 3pm that about 5,000 users across the four areas might be affected by the incident.
The disruption was caused by construction carried out by a third-party contractor not engaged by NLT, it noted, adding:
We take a serious view of such disruption in services caused by errant contractors and will not hesitate to take necessary actions against the errant party.
Source: NetLink Trust
Later at 7pm, NLT said the construction works had damaged fibre infrastructure, according to preliminary investigations.
Its technical teams were on-site working to restore services “as quickly and safely as possible”, but additional safety precautions are required, due to site constraints and wet weather conditions.
These may affect restoration timings, it noted.
As it stands, services are expected to be “progressively restored” by Sunday morning, “barring unforeseen circumstances”.
Meanwhile, the Land Transport Authority (LTA) said on Saturday night that the broadband outage was linked to the technical issues affecting the Expected Time of Arrival (ETA) system for buses that resulted in inaccurate bus arrival timings on the same day.
In a Facebook post, LTA said both disruptions were due to fibre service cables that were damaged during contiguous bored pile works for the North–South Corridor project.
LTA, Singtel and NetLink Trust are working closely to assess the damage and implement repairs as quickly as possible, LTA assured, adding that bus services will continue operating at their usual frequencies.
Also read: Singtel does system, network adjustments after disruptions, customers may face intermittent issues
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Featured image adapted from Glenn Carstens-Peters on Unsplash.