Some Singtel customers affected by connectivity issues; telco says latest incident unrelated to recent outage

This came a day after Singtel experienced a more than eight-hour disruption to its network on Mar 16.

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SINGAPORE: Some Singtel customers experienced connectivity issues on Tuesday (Mar 17), a day after the telco's network was hit by a disruption that lasted more than eight hours.  

The telecommunications company said in a Facebook post at 11.30am on Tuesday that it is aware of "a small number" of customers who may be experiencing connectivity issues.

It then provided an update around five hours later, stating that mobile connectivity was restored for the affected customers.

Tuesday's incident was not related to the disruption on Monday, Singtel added.

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The Downdetector website, which tracks outages by collating status reports, showed more than 300 reports related to Singtel as of 11.46am.

The telco said in its initial social media post: "Our engineers are working urgently on resolving the matter as quickly as possible. We sincerely apologise for the inconvenience caused."

Some Facebook users on Tuesday reported issues with calls and mobile data, such as having no phone service, while others had Wi-Fi connectivity problems.

Some Gomo users also commented on Singtel's Facebook post and Downdetector’s Singtel page that they had issues connecting to mobile data and were unable to make calls. Gomo, under Singtel, offers SIM-only 4G and 5G mobile plans.

The telco encouraged one user to check if his or her device could connect to the 4G network.

“If not, kindly restart your device, toggle airplane mode on and off, and remove and reinsert your SIM card,” Singtel said in a reply to a Facebook comment.  

MONDAY'S DISRUPTION

The latest incident came after the telco on Monday experienced a more than eight-hour disruption to its network.

Thousands of Singtel users encountered issues with their mobile service, with some unable to pay for items or use their mobile data for work.

At about 9pm on Monday, the telco said  that its 4G and 5G mobile services had been restored following a delay caused by “technical issues”. It added that there was no evidence to suggest the incident was a cyber-related event. 

Last month, the Singapore authorities said that all four major telcos were targets of a cyberattack by UNC3886. The attack, which was made public last year, enabled attackers to gain access to a few critical systems of Singtel, M1, StarHub and Simba, but no sensitive customer data was lost.

The Infocomm Media Development Authority told CNA on Monday that it "takes a serious view of any service disruptions and will investigate this incident". 

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