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SINGAPORE: The Infocomm Media Development Authority (IMDA) has imposed a financial penalty of S$1 million (US$782,000) on Singtel for mobile service disruptions in March.<\/p>\n
The disruptions, which occurred on Mar 16, Mar 18 and Mar 19 this year, affected about 720,000 of Singtel\u2019s mobile consumer and business subscribers, IMDA said on Tuesday (Oct 20).<\/p>\n
The disruption on Mar 16 lasted for about nine hours.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Singtel users started experiencing mobile connectivity issues from about 10.30am, with 4G services restored by around 1.30pm. The telco\u2019s 5G services were progressively restored from 2.45pm but full 5G services were not restored until about 8pm that day.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The disruption on Mar 18 was resolved within an hour, Singtel\u2019s CEO Ng Tian Chong said previously.<\/p>\n
IMDA\u2019s investigation found that the service disruption on Mar 16 was caused by a chiller system failure at a Singtel exchange.<\/p>\n
This caused the mobile network equipment at the exchange to overheat and shut down, IMDA said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis resulted from a failure by Singtel\u2019s vendor to follow standard operating procedures to reopen a manual valve controlling water flow after a scheduled maintenance, and the lack of active monitoring by Singtel of its manual valves or water flow to the chiller system,\u201d the authority added.<\/p>\n
Investigations by IMDA also found that the disruptions on Mar 18 and Mar 19 arose after 5G mobile traffic was redirected from the affected exchange to another Singtel exchange after the disruption on Mar 16.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe increased 5G mobile traffic load, coupled with a disabled network packet optimiser and a software bug at the other exchange, resulted in intermittent connectivity for some Singtel subscribers during the evenings on both days,\u201d IMDA said.<\/p>\n
The packet optimiser optimises data throughput and latency by routing data packets using the most optimal pathways.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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