Minister for Communications and Information Yaacob Ibrahim has expressed his dismay on the M1 service outage which happened on Tuesday.

"It has been a frustrating experience for M1 customers, especially having just experienced other disruptions in very recent months," wrote Dr Yaacob on his Facebook page.

"They had given the feedback that M1 could have done better in providing updates and communicating to its subscribers when the services resumed," he wrote.

Many M1 users were left stranded when they were unable to make voice calls or send text messages in a service disruption that occured at about 7am on Tuesday and lasted past noon. Some could not get through to M1's hotlines too.

M1 users received a message on Wednesday afternoon, with personal apologies from the telco's chief executive officer. "I sincerely apologise for the inconvenience you experienced. I take this incident seriously and will spare no further effort to enhance our network," Ms Kooi said on the SMS. M1 will be offering free local mobile calls, SMS and MMS on Sunday.

SingTel users also experienced intermittent 3G and 4G services on Wednesday, Dr Yaacob wrote in his post.

"While no network service is foolproof, telcos can improve in the way they update and assist their customers when disruptions occur. We should expect better service," he added.

The Infocomm Development Authority is investigating M1's service disruption on Tuesday. Dr Yaacob has also asked the agency to ensure that M1's network functions optimally.