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Crucial to get to the bottom of cause of SingTel fire: Yaacob

Minister for Communications and Information Dr Yaacob Ibrahim said it is crucial to get to the bottom of a fire that broke out at a SingTel Internet facility. -- PHOTO: SINGTEL
Minister for Communications and Information Dr Yaacob Ibrahim said it is crucial to get to the bottom of a fire that broke out at a SingTel Internet facility. -- PHOTO: SINGTEL

Minister for Communications and Information Dr Yaacob Ibrahim said it is crucial to get to the bottom of a fire that broke out at a SingTel Internet facility.

Speaking to reporters after visiting the site of the fire at Bukit Panjang on Thursday evening, Dr Yaacob said the Government is "quite happy" with how SingTel had handled the situation based on the business continuity processes and emergency plans in place.

He said the priorty is to get services fully restored and then investigate the cause of the fire after the police report is out. "We must prevent such things from happening again in future the most important thing is to determine what happened...Whether systems are adequate. Clearly there are things we need to learn but our systems are becoming very complex," he said.

On Wednesday afternoon, a fire at SingTel's Bukit Panjang building brought down banking, telecommunications and even betting services in many parts of Singapore for hours. Internet links of SingTel's corporate customers including several major banks and telcos StarHub and M1 were also disrupted. SingTel expects all services to be full restored by 7am on Friday morning.

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