Update 2 (24 May 2011): M1 has offered all its customers free local mobile calls, texts and multimedia messages on 25 May 2011 as apology for the inconvenience caused by the service outage.
Update 1 (19 May 2011): A third statement released by M1 on the night of 19 May said the technical disruptions had been traced to a faulty network card in its backend system.
Singapore’s M1 has been struck by a service disruption that resulted in a number of subscribers being unable to connect to its network.
The problems started early yesterday morning, and problems users experienced ranged from erratic data connections to being wholly unable to make or receive calls or text messages. An affected user told TelecomAsia his data connection had been completely cut off for most of the day.
A press release issued by M1 at 2 pm yesterday said the operator was experiencing technical difficulties on one of its customer management servers, resulting in mobile services being ‘temporarily disrupted.’
A follow-up statement issued 9.30pm last night said services were ‘progressively being restored’, with full service restoration expected ‘shortly’.
M1 spokeswoman Petrina Teoh told TelecomAsia that services had been fully restored slightly past 10pm last night.
M1 spokesman Ivan Lim told TelecomAsia the operator was unable to comment further on the nature of the technical difficulties experienced as investigations were still ongoing.
According to the Straits Times, the incident is believed to be Singapore’s first major service outage caused by a telco’s internal system. M1 was hit by a service disruption in May 1997 that was caused by interference from a SingTel base station transmitting trial CDMA signals. M1 subscribers experienced dropped calls and SingTel was fined S$5,000 for the incident.