IMDA to investigate Singtel landline outage, emergency & service lines fully restored

The Infocomm Media Development Authority (IMDA) "takes a serious view of any service disruption to public telecommunications services"and will investigate the Singtel landline outage which occurred on Oct. 8, 2024.

The outage lasted several hours from 2pm to 4pm, and also affected emergency hotlines 999 and 995.

Singtel subsequently announced at 8:25pm that its fixed voice services have been fully restored.

"IMDA takes a serious view"

Responding to Mothership queries, a spokesperson from IMDA said that Singtel was required to restore services urgently, with emphasis on key government services.

The outage, which started at 2pm, caused disruptions to service lines including hospitals, banks, and other businesses.

A spike in outages was first observed spike by DownDetector in Singtel outages at 1:51pm, with 2,722 reports confirmed by 3:22pm.

Full services were restored at 6:30pm, including the Singapore Police Force (SPF) and Singapore Civil Defence Force (SCDF) emergency hotlines 999 and 995.

Singtel apologises, says outage is not "cyber-related"

The telco company announced in its updated Facebook post at 8:25pm that its fixed voice services have been fully restored.

It added: "We are sorry for the disruption and the inconvenience caused. Thank you for your patience."

According to CNA, a spokesperson from Singtel said that the outage is an "isolated incident" and added that there's "no evidence to suggest it is a cyber-related event".

"We are working diligently with our partners to investigate the root cause to prevent this from happening again," the telco added.

Singtel said that its engineers had "worked urgently" to support affected services and customers, especially to restore essential services.

They had been able to identify the issue and rapidly deploy recovery by 4:15pm.

The spokesperson also confirmed that mobile and broadband services were not affected during the outage.

Top photos via Google Maps & Infocomm Media Development Authority of Singapore/Facebook