SINGAPORE – A Singtel mobile outage that lasted more than eight hours on March 16 disrupted essential services in Singapore, including payments, ride hailing and food delivery.
The cause of the disruption, which started at around 10.30am, is still unknown. But the telco said it is not due to a cyberattack.
After more than eight hours, Singtel said in a Facebook post at around 7pm that its services were restored.
“We’d like to update that 4G and 5G mobile services have been restored. We apologise for the inconvenience caused,” said the telco.
Singtel posted another notice at nearly 9pm, noting that some customers could still be experiencing problems connecting to the network, and advised them to switch their device to airplane mode and back, or restart their phone. Customers may also call Singtel on 1688 for assistance.
It is not known how many Singtel users were affected, but service outage website Downdetector received thousands of reports from affected users, including those using its no-frills GOMO plans.
In a statement, payment services group NETS said that only merchants using Singtel cards in their NETS terminals, and consumers using Singtel’s mobile connection to make payments, were affected on March 16.
“Users and terminals using Wifi connectivity should not be affected and merchants who continue to face issues may contact NETS Customer Service for assistance,” said NETS.
Gig workers’ ability to take on jobs was hard hit by the outage.
When Grab delivery driver Suhada Abdullah, 51, started her shift at 11am, she could not connect to the Grab app. When her connection was restored at around 3pm, she had already lost four hours of potential wages.
