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Singtel fined $500k for fibre broadband outage

This article is more than 12 months old

Singtel has been fined $500,000 - the largest amount in three years - for an islandwide fibre broadband outage last year that left some 490,000 users cut off from the Web.

The outage on Dec 3 lasted nearly 24 hours and affected close to 90 per cent of Singtel's fibre broadband user base.

Announcing the fine yesterday, the Info-communications Media Development Authority (IMDA) said its investigations showed that the disruption was triggered by a planned maintenance. The exercise to install security patches overloaded the servers, which could not process subscribers' request for connection to any website.

IMDA also noted that there were warning signs before the incident with the same servers running at almost full capacity, but Singtel "had failed to take prompt action".

In view of the high utilisation rate, Singtel should have exercised "greater due diligence and caution" to prevent overloading the servers when installing the security patches.

In determining the fine, IMDA took into consideration mitigating factors such as the $5 million in discounts and bill waivers Singtel offered its customers in compensation.

- THE STRAITS TIMES

SINGTEL