Singtel fined $1m over disruption to emergency call services

Incident involving fixed-line outage in October 2024 within telco's control: IMDA

- Lee Li Ying

Singtel has been fined $1 million for a fixed voice service outage that affected 500,000 users for more than four hours on Oct 8, 2024.

Calls to some government agencies, healthcare organisations, banks and emergency hotlines 995 and 999 were disrupted.

"The potential impact on the safety and security of the public could have been very serious," said the sector regulator, the Infocomm Media Development Authority (IMDA), on Dec 11.

In determining the financial penalty, IMDA said it took into account the scale and impact of the disruption, and the time taken to restore the network.

In a statement on Dec 11, Singtel Singapore’s chief executive officer Ng Tian Chong said the telco accepts the financial penalty.

"We recognise the seriousness of the disruption to our fixed voice service last October and the concern and distress it caused our customers and members of the public. I would like to express my sincere apologies once again for the disruption and inconvenience experienced," said Mr Ng.

IMDA’s investigation found that Singtel hosted two separate virtualised firewalls — one for its fixed-line voice system and another for the monitoring system that manages home broadband routers and pay TV set-top boxes — on the same hardware.