StarHub's internet service was disrupted in many areas of Singapore on Apr. 15.

Users faced intermittent access for at least seven hours from around 11am till just after 8pm.

StarHub's apology

StarHub has apologised for the service disruption, saying that it "apologises unreservedly for the inconvenience caused" in a statement issued on Apr. 16.

StarHub acknowledged that more people were staying home to work and study because of the nationwide circuit breaker measures currently in place, and said that in this time, it would take network resilience and quality especially seriously.

It also said that StarHub’s top priority during the disruption was to restore services swiftly for affected customers.

One-time 20 per cent rebate

StarHub is offering affected customers a one-time 20 per cent rebate on their Home Broadband monthly fee.

Affected customers will need to register for this rebate on a dedicated website, and StarHub said that it would announce the details to customers "soon".

What caused the disruption?

StarHub said that a cyber attack was ruled out as a possible cause of the disruptions.

Instead, the service disruptions were cause by two separate, unrelated incidents.

Faulty equipment issue

StarHub said that at around 11am, some customers in the North and North-East regions faced a 20-minute disruption to their fibre services.

This was due to "an isolated fault in a piece of network equipment."

According to StarHub, back-up equipment took over immediately, and affected services resumed progressively for customers.

The faulty equipment was then replaced with a new unit, and services were closely monitored for stability.

Network issue

The second incident happened at about 3:50pm, StarHub said.

StarHub discovered a network issue with its Domain Name Servers(DNS) that serve home broadband customers, and there was an intermittent issue in performing queries to the DNS.

This resulted in some customers experiencing slow, or no internet access.

StarHub said that the issue was rectified, and that affected services were fully restored at 8:20pm on Apr. 15.

Peter Kaliaropoulos, Chief Executive, StarHub, said:

“We are deeply sorry for the disruption of service and frustration experienced by some of our customers on Wednesday. Our customers place great trust and importance on our network quality and resiliency, and we regrettably fell short of giving them the service experience they deserve”.

Action taken by StarHub

Kaliaropoulos said that StarHub has taken immediate steps to prevent a recurrence.

StarHub said that it is "cooperating fully" with the Infocomm Media Development Authority (IMDA) in investigations, and welcome any necessary infrastructure audit by IMDA.

“We assure our customers that our network traffic is well below available capacity and ample redundancy has been built into our network to cater for high service levels to be delivered consistently", Kaliaropoulos added.

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