The 'double whammies' of unrelated network problems at SingTel and StarHub saw scores of users cut off from the Internet intermittently.

The kinks have since been ironed out by the two telecom operators.

The disruption which affected SingTel users happened a week ago, on the evening of Jan 18, when a fibre optic telecom cable was accidentally cut by a contractor digging up roads.

The cable, located in the East, carries data from overseas websites. SingTel users islandwide were affected, and they could not go online to surf the Web or download e-mail.

SingTel spokesman Chia Boon Chong said the cable was not totally severed, so the disruption was limited.

Less than 1 per cent of the telco's 455,000 users were affected. Moreover, the telco immediately diverted Internet traffic to other cables.

Many users could thus get connected before the affected cable was repaired eight hours later. By the early hours of the following day, the problem had been fully dealt with.

Two weeks earlier, in an unrelated incident, some StarHub broadband subscribers had experienced an unstable Internet link.

Webpages would take minutes, instead of seconds, to load and some users were disconnected from the Net a few times a day.

Some StarHub users said the link would be back after 15 to 20 minutes, while others said they could surf the Net only after resetting their modems.

Since then, many users have said their connections are back to normal, but some are still unhappy with slow speeds.

According to StarHub, the problem was due to a fault in its network equipment.

The company had installed a software update that caused 'occasional disconnection' in some areas, said spokesman Cassie Fong.

She added that only 'a few dozens' of StarHub users - out of more than 338,000 users - were affected.

The question observers now ask is whether the two operators will be fined.

Among the guidelines mandated by the Infocomm Development Authority of Singapore (IDA) - the industry regulator - broadband operators have to keep their networks up 99 per cent of the time. Failing this, they can be fined $5,000 for each offence.

The IDA said yesterday that it would investigate both matters.

Some users, as a result of the two occurrences, have raised concerns about the quality of broadband services.

Project administrator Anbu Ramasamy, who is in his 30s, said he expected his StarHub service, when disrupted, to be fixed quickly since he was paying more than $70 each month.

Of the disruption three weeks ago, he recalled: 'I couldn't surf any webpages or check e-mail on Hotmail.'

Finance officer and SingTel subscriber Xu Jiali, 30, said support staff should know better what was going on.

She added: 'They kept saying there was nothing wrong. If they'd told me it was a broken cable, I wouldn't have had to check my router and modem and go through all that trouble.'

siewtha@sph.com.sg

yuenc@sph.com.sg