'This should not have happened': Singtel CEO apologises after 3 days of network disruptions

Singtel customers experienced service outages across three consecutive days beginning Mar. 16, prompting a public apology from the company's chief executive.

On Mar. 19, Singtel CEO Ng Tian Chong apologised for the recent service disruptions, acknowledging the impact they had on subscribers, CNA reported.

"We know how important it is to stay connected and recognise the impact these incidents may have had on our customers. This should not have happened. We sincerely apologise," he said.

Mar. 16: Nine-hour outage due to mechanical fault

The most significant disruption occurred on Monday, when roughly 15 per cent of Singtel's customer base began experiencing mobile connectivity issues from around 10:30am.

According to CNA, Ng attributed the cause to a "mechanical fault" at one of the telco's network facilities.

By 10:59am that day, over 5,800 outage reports had been made.

Ng noted that while redundancy measures were in place, the situation required network reconfiguration, which delayed full recovery.

4G services for affected customers were restored by around 1:30pm and 5G services were progressively restored from about 2:45pm, though full 5G restoration was only completed at around 8pm.

Some customers also needed to restart their devices or seek additional support to reconnect.

Mar. 17: Issues due to software bug

The following day, a fresh wave of disruptions hit a smaller group of customers.

Singtel had confirmed on Facebook at 11:30am that some users were experiencing connectivity issues, but clarified that the problems were unrelated to the previous day's fault.

CNA reported that the outage stemmed from "a software bug from an earlier pre-planned IT system upgrade".

The bug had initially gone undetected as it had overlapped with the earlier incident, said Ng.

Once identified, Singtel's teams moved quickly to address it, with full service restored by around 4pm.

Mar. 18: Brief traffic spike

In the wake of the first two incidents, the company undertook network reconfigurations to "further stabilise and optimise performance", Ng told CNA.

During this process, a brief surge in network traffic at around 5:30pm on Mar. 18 caused further disruption. However, this issue was said to have been resolved within an hour.

Outage-tracking platform Downdetector recorded a spike of 536 reports by 6:17pm that evening.

In a Facebook post at 7:26pm, the company acknowledged that some customers were facing "momentary connectivity issues", and confirmed the matter had been resolved.

Ng added that each of the three incidents was unrelated.

"We are committed to learning from these events and working with our vendors to further enhance our network resilience and improve recovery times," he said.

Top photo from Canva