Internet connection disrupted for about 2,000 in Bishan, Thomson: NetLink Trust

SINGAPORE – About 2,000 internet connections in Bishan and Thomson were disrupted due to fibre cables that were damaged during construction works, NetLink Trust said on its website on Sept 15.

The company said investigations show that multiple NetLink fibre cables were damaged during road widening works by a third-party contractor, which it did not engage.

NetLink Trust designs, builds, owns and operates the passive fibre network infrastructure of Singapore’s Nationwide Broadband Network.

“Our recovery teams remain on site and are working continuously to restore affected services. Service restoration has commenced, with affected connections being progressively restored,” it said.

Earlier, in a 5pm statement, NetLink Trust said that services were expected to be completely restored by the morning of Sept 16, barring unforeseen circumstances.

In an update at 9.45pm, it said recovery efforts were complicated by conditions at the damage site, including water ingress and obstructions that were limiting access to the underground cables.

It added that its teams will be working through the night to repair the damaged cables.

However, it added that the timeline for internet service recovery could change as works progress and the full extent of the damage is confirmed.

In separate social media posts on Sept 15, telcos Singtel, StarHub and M1 said the outage may have affected some of their subscribers.

StarHub said in a Facebook post that the disruption was due to a “fibre cut”, while Singtel separately said on the social networking platform that it was informed by NetLink Trust of the outage in Bishan.

In an update at around 7.20pm, Singtel added that its mobile services are not affected by the outage and are operating normally.

All three telcos said they are working with NetLink Trust on the issue.

On Downdetector, Singtel recorded a peak of around 120 reports of service outage around 2.30pm, while StarHub recorded 91 reports at around 1.40pm. M1 recorded 32 reports at around 1.30pm.

NetLink Trust previously experienced a fibre service outage in April, during which 5,000 broadband connections in central and north-east Singapore were affected for around 20 hours.

The cable damage also affected the Expected Time of Arrival system for buses, and led to the system displaying inaccurate bus timings and long wait times at bus stops and on mobile apps.

The Land Transport Authority said then that the fibre service cables were damaged during construction works for the North-South Corridor project.