Telco resilience regulations under review following Singtel outages in March

SINGAPORE - Rules that govern telco service resilience in Singapore are being relooked to ensure they remain effective, Minister for Digital Development and Information Josephine Teo told Parliament on April 7.

This comes on the heels of Singtel’s three-day service disruptions in mid-March that affected hundreds of thousands of its customers.

Mrs Teo was responding to questions from MPs on what the authorities would do to prevent or minimise similar occurrences.

She did not provide details on how telecommunications service resilience regulations will be tightened, but assured the House that her ministry and the Infocomm Media Development Authority (IMDA) take all service disruptions seriously and recognise the concerns raised.

Mrs Teo said that service providers are currently held to high service standards under the Telecommunications Act and the Telecom Service Resiliency Code.

For example, telcos must ensure that service incidents are resolved within one hour, failing which IMDA may take enforcement actions and impose financial penalties.

Telcos are also required to conduct regular audits on key telecom infrastructure for resilience and uphold service standards such as ensuring more than 99 per cent nationwide outdoor mobile service coverage at all times.

Singtel’s outage on March 16 lasted around nine hours and affected about 600,000 customers. It was caused by a mechanical fault at one of its network facilities.

Separately, about 2,000 customers experienced mobile connectivity problems on March 17 because of a software bug from a planned IT system upgrade.

On March 18, an undisclosed number of customers experienced connectivity issues after the telco experienced a brief spike in network traffic while carrying out network reconfigurations to further stabilise and optimise network performance following the earlier disruptions.

The outages had disrupted essential services in Singapore, with many Singtel users facing issues for services such as payment, ride-hailing and food delivery on the affected days.

Mr Melvin Yong (Radin Mas) argued for more stringent resilience benchmarks for telcos, and asked if IMDA would mandate the stress-testing of failover systems under peak or adverse conditions.

Mrs Teo said that investigations into Singtel’s service disruptions may reveal areas where the stress-testing is inadequate, and how regulations may be strengthened. “The purpose of the investigations is to arrive at a better understanding of how the system components are interacting with one another, and whether we need to strengthen the measures” she said.

She said that telecom networks have become more complex with successive upgrades from 3G to 5G, with increased demand due to AI-enabled services.

Even so, the average number of disruptions fell from an average of eight a year between 2016 and 2020 to an average of six a year between 2021 and 2025. The average duration of outages also shortened from eight hours to about 6½ hours.

Nominated MP Neo Kok Beng also suggested that telcos explore mobile-switching arrangements, so consumers can be moved to another network if their provider goes down.

Mrs Teo said the Government would continue studying the idea, but noted that such arrangements may not address every type of outage – it depends on which part of the network is affected.

Switching could also come with added costs, she said, adding that Wi-Fi services are viable alternatives during an outage.

Mrs Teo said that telcos could improve on timely communication, acknowledging Mr Alex Yeo’s (Potong Pasir) call for telcos to provide real-time updates on outages, But she also pointed to Downdetector as a reliable source of information on outages.

She added that the Government will also examine how well service providers communicated with subscribers and members of the public in assessing their outage management.

Mr Ang Wei Neng (West Coast-Jurong West GRC) and Mr Gerald Giam (Aljunied GRC) asked if telcos were mandated to compensate affected consumers, similar to how it is done in some European countries.

Replying, Mrs Teo said the UK and Germany require compensation only for the loss of service for broadband or landline – the Singtel incidents in March would not have qualified.

She also said that Singtel had voluntarily given $5 to $10 rebates to its affected customers as part of service recovery.

As for the financial losses businesses suffered from network failures, Mrs Teo said that telcos may have built into their contracts, especially those with bigger customers, conditions upon which compensation would be due when there is disruption.

“We are not privy to all the details of these arrangements, but I can say to the member that they do exist. So some of the customers may already be seeking damages from the telco service providers when an incident of this nature happens,” she said.

Mrs Teo said the IMDA investigations are ongoing, and its findings will be published.

IMDA will not hesitate to take strong regulatory actions should any lapses be identified, she added.