The Infocomm Media Development Authority (IMDA) is investigating Tuesday's disruption of telco StarHub's network services, following an Internet routing issue that left customers here unable to access the Internet.
In response to queries from The Straits Times (ST), a spokesman for the authority said: "IMDA is aware of a disruption to StarHub's Internet and mobile data services on Sept 17. IMDA required StarHub to restore services expeditiously and keep affected users updated.
"IMDA takes a serious view of any service disruption to public telecommunication services and is investigating the incident."
Yesterday, StarHub said in a statement that its disrupted network service on Tuesday was caused by an Internet routing issue.
Said the telco: "An Internet routing issue has been identified as the root cause of the incident and StarHub has ruled out a cyber attack."
Both mobile Internet and fixed-line Internet connections were affected by this issue.
StarHub said it discovered the technical issue just after 6pm on Tuesday.
Mobile data services were restored within 20 minutes, with all services fully restored by 9.50pm.
Also that evening, StarHub's main website starhub.com was reportedly down intermittently.
ST understands that the routing issues StarHub faced affected incoming and outgoing Web activity, which caused disrupted access to its website.
"StarHub takes this incident seriously and is implementing measures to prevent a recurrence," said StarHub's statement, although the telco did not specify the measures.
"StarHub apologises to customers for the inconvenience caused by this incident and sincerely thanks customers for their patience and understanding."
In April 2017, StarHub received a warning from the authorities for two disruptions to its home broadband network in October 2016.
The telco had suspected the disruptions were due to a cyber attack, but through investigations, IMDA and the Cyber Security Agency of Singapore found that StarHub did not have sufficient system capacity to cope with an Internet traffic surge.
The telco has since increased its capacity.
In 2015, StarHub was fined $50,000 for a cable television disruption on Sept 28, 2013. The disruption, which started at around 12.40am, lasted for nearly five hours and was estimated to have affected about 170,000 subscribers.
