Singapore telecom regulator, the IDA, has fined SingTel S$300,000 ($245,000) for a voice service disruption last year that affected over 500 users.
The fine follows IDA’s investigation of the disruption of SingTel’s “mio Voice” services on October 28 and 29 and November 4, which found that the incumbent carrier had not fulfilled its obligation to provide resilient fixed line telephone services under the regulator’s service resiliency code.
The service disruption incident affected SingTel’s mio Voice fixed line telephone services in parts of Tampines, Changi and Pasir Ris for varying periods over October 28 and 29, and in parts of Bukit Panjang, Bukit Timah and Woodlands on November 4.
The regulator's investigations showed that the service disruptions were caused by a hardware capacity limitation of the optical line terminals (OLT) at the Tampines Exchange and the Bukit Panjang Exchange.
Following the service difficulties, SingTel upgraded the hardware capacity of all its OLT equipment, including those at areas that were not affected by the disruptions.
As the cause of the service disruptions was a hardware limitation in SingTel’s equipment, IDA was not satisfied that SingTel had actively monitored and taken adequate steps to ensure sufficient hardware capacity was provided, the regulator said in a statement.
In its decision, the regulator had also taken into account the fact that the impact to end users was localized and affected an aggregate of more than 500 end users.
This is the latest financial penalty SingTel face this year for service outage. The IDA earlier imposed S$400,000 ($310,500) penalty on the incumbent carrier for a service disruption of its 2G network in 2011, despite the problems lasting less than a day and no actual outage occurring.