Fibre services fully restored on Sunday morning after broadband outage caused by damaged cables

SINGAPORE – Fibre services at some locations affected by a service outage on April 18 have been fully restored.

In a statement on its website on April 19, telecommunications infrastructure provider NetLink Trust said services in parts of Ang Mo Kio, Bishan, Sengkang and Punggol were fully restored at 7am.

About 5,000 users of broadband services in central and north-east Singapore were hit on April 18 by a fibre service outage, with Singapore’s three major telcos – Singtel, StarHub and M1 – among those affected.

NetLink Trust said on April 19 that its team had worked through the night to restore services as quickly and safely as possible.

The disruption was caused by damage to fibre infrastructure during third-party construction works, it added.

“We take incidents affecting essential telecommunications services seriously and are conducting a thorough review,” said NetLink Trust.

It said appropriate follow-up actions will be taken after investigations are completed.

“We sincerely apologise for the inconvenience caused and thank affected end users for their patience and understanding,” it added.

Those who continue to experience service issues are advised to contact their respective internet service providers for help.

A StarHub user, who wanted to be known only as Mr Soetedja, said he initially assumed the issue was with his home router or modem because he was not notified of the outage, which also affected his StarHub TV service.

Mr Soetedja, who lives in Bishan Street 22 and works as a manager in the healthcare sector, told The Straits Times that he spent about 45 minutes troubleshooting the issue.

“While I understand that outages can occur, timely communication would have helped manage expectations and avoid unnecessary inconvenience,” Mr Soetedja said.

The fibre service outage on April 18 had also affected the expected time of arrival (ETA) system for buses and led to the system displaying inaccurate bus timings and long wait times at bus stops and on mobile apps.

In a Facebook post on April 19, the Land Transport Authority (LTA) said the ETA system was restored with the resumption of fibre services.

Bus services continued to operate as normal throughout the incident and were not impacted, it added.

It said it is reviewing the incident to prevent a recurrence.

LTA had said late on April 18 that fibre service cables were damaged at about 10.40am during “contiguous bored pile works” for the North-South Corridor project. Such works involve drilling large vertical holes into the ground and filling them with concrete to form a protective wall for excavation.

NetLink Trust said on April 18 that it takes a serious view of the service disruption “caused by errant contractors and will not hesitate to take necessary actions against the errant party”.

The Infocomm Media Development Authority said on April 18 that it will continue its probe into the incident and will take strong action against errant parties if they are found to have flouted the rules.