SINGAPORE - Thousands of Internet users were unable to surf the Web for about 10 hours on Wednesday (May 22) after a fibre broadband outage hit telco M1.

In the latest update on M1's Facebook page at 6pm, the telco said its engineers had fully restored affected services.

Users who were still experiencing connection difficulties were urged to call its customer service hotline.

The telco did not say what caused the problem, which was reported as early as 8.20am.

The disruption comes a day after hundreds of Internet customers of all three telcos - Singtel, StarHub and M1 - could not surf the Web due to a fibre optic cable cut experienced by Netlink Trust, which owns Singapore's fibre network and resells fibre connectivity to the telcos.

Wednesday's disruption affected users in the northern and eastern parts of Singapore, and is believed to be unrelated to Tuesday's problem.

Channel sales manager Aaron Koh, 43, said his M1 fibre broadband connection was down at 9am and restored at noon on Wednesday. "I work from home and could not access my company's website or make conference calls. I had to use my mobile broadband connections."

Mr Larry Leong, 51, said his M1 fibre broadband and digital phone line was cut off at 8.20am. The technology consultant, who lives in Seletar, said service was restored at 3.30pm.

Complaints by consumers also flooded the telco's Facebook page, as well as online sites such as HardwareZone and Reddit.

Downdetector.sg - a site that provides an overview of various service outages, including public transport and online services - recorded more than 2,400 disruption reports by M1 users around 9am.

Many of those affected said they were from the northern and eastern parts of the island, including Sengkang, Bishan, Choa Chu Kang and Pasir Ris.

Several netizens also said they experienced disruptions in other parts of Singapore, such as Bukit Batok and Boon Lay.

An M1 spokesman, however, said: "M1 has confirmed that only customers in the northern and eastern parts of Singapore are affected, not the western part or other regions."

On Tuesday, the fibre cable cut that affected broadband services in Yishun lasted for about five hours. In a statement on Tuesday, Netlink Trust said: "Some 700 end-users' fibre broadband services in Yishun may have been affected by this incident."

In a statement later that day, an M1 spokesman said: "The fibre service incident is caused by a technical issue in one of our fixed residential access equipment, and this primarily affected fibre connectivity to customers served by three Netlink Trust's central offices, namely Ang Mo Kio, Bedok and East."

Correction note: The article has been edited to reflect the correct surname of Mr Larry Leong. We are sorry for the error.