850 homes in Yio Chu Kang, Serangoon hit by fibre cable outage: Netlink Trust
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NetLink Trust said some of its underground cables were damaged by a third-party contractor.
PHOTO: ST FILE
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SINGAPORE - A fibre service outage disrupted the Internet connection of some 850 homes in Yio Chu Kang and Serangoon on Thursday, telco infrastructure provider NetLink Trust said in a statement.
NetLink Trust, which provides the fibre infrastructure to Internet service providers Singtel, StarHub, M1 and MyRepublic, said some of its underground cables were damaged by a third-party contractor.
“The fibre service disruption was caused by a third party’s contractor carrying out construction activity. The errant third-party contractor was not engaged by NetLink,” the company said.
“We take a serious view of such disruption in services caused by errant contractors. We are investigating this matter and will take all necessary actions against the errant party,” it added.
In its latest statement at 9.15pm, NetLink said the disruption was resolved at 9.13pm, adding that it is working closely with all relevant parties to ensure that service to the affected areas is restored as soon as possible.
It added that affected users can call their respective Internet service providers should they need help.
A number of users have taken to social media to voice their frustration.
On Singtel Support’s Twitter account, there were three complaints of service disruption.
On M1’s Facebook page, six users said their broadband services were down.
M1 user Ho Weijia told The Straits Times that his Internet connection was down from 11am until about 4pm.
Another M1 user wrote to ST, saying that his connection was down from 2pm to 9.15pm.
He said he received an SMS from M1 about the service disruption only at 3.26pm, and the telco did not offer any service recovery.
The outage has “caused a great of confusion” and is certainly not welcome, especially “in this day and age where people work from home and rely heavily on the Internet”, he added.
Responding to queries from ST, an M1 spokesman said no incident has been reported since NetLink Trust restored the fibre services.
