Switch to backup system failed during Singtel outage on Oct 8

No evidence to suggest incident was linked to sabotage or cyber attack, says Janil

- Anjali Raguraman

A backup system did not kick in as planned when an unprecedented Singtel outage occurred on Oct 8, causing intermittent service disruption that lasted several hours, said Senior Minister of State for Digital Development and Information Janil Puthucheary on Nov 11.

On Oct 8, calls to emergency services and healthcare institutions, as well as banks and businesses, were disrupted in the landline outage. The disruption lasted more than three hours before services progressively resumed in the evening.

According to preliminary findings, a network component in one of the two systems supporting Singtel's fixed line voice service experienced a technical issue, said Dr Janil, who was responding to several questions raised by MPs in Parliament.

"The two systems, located in separate telephone exchanges, are designed to immediately take over the full load of the other when one system malfunctions," he said.

"However, in this instance, the failover did not happen seamlessly, which caused the intermittent service disruption."

All services were progressively restored over a four-hour time period from the start of the incident, he said, adding that half of all calls made could still be connected.