SingTel expects full restoration of services by Friday

SingTel expects full restoration of services by Friday

    By Vimita Mohandas
    POSTED: 10 Oct 2013 21:59

SingTel says it expects full restoration of services to residential customers by 7am Friday, following a disruption after a fire at its Bukit Panjang facility on Wednesday afternoon.

SINGAPORE: SingTel says it expects full restoration of services to residential customers by 7am Friday, following a disruption after a fire at its Bukit Panjang facility on Wednesday afternoon.

"Cable repairs for corporate customers were completed by 7pm (Thursday) as planned. Remaining affected services are on track to be completed by 7am tomorrow," tweeted SingTel.

An estimated 60,000 broadband and 46,000 mioTV customers were affected after the fire damaged both SingTel and OpenNet's cables.

About 150 mobile base stations, which are equipment to transmit mobile signals to customers, as well as 4,628 circuits that cater to SingTel's corporate services, were also down.

The SingTel building at Bukit Panjang is one of nine central offices that houses key internet equipment and provides fibre infrastructure.

SingTel said it has about 100 technicians and engineers on site working round the clock to restore services as soon as possible.

The fire broke out at about 2.15pm on Wednesday.

SingTel engineers started work after 6pm when they could access the area.

At 8pm, SingTel said its services were expected to be completed by 6am on Thursday.

At 9pm, it said eight out of 33 damaged cables were restored. But at 11pm, SingTel said the damage was more extensive than initially assessed.

At a news conference on Thursday, SingTel said 149 cables were damaged.

Of these, two-thirds belong to OpenNet, Singapore's ultra-fast fibre broadband network builder.

SingTel is using a splicing method to restore services - which means cutting off the burnt areas of the fibre and rejoining them.

When asked about its contingency plans, SingTel said its fibres are separated into three chambers in the cable room.

As one of the three chambers was affected by the fire, traffic is now being diverted to the two unaffected chambers.

Yuen Kuan Moon, SingTel's Chief Executive Officer, Consumer Singapore, said: "The fibre services are being impacted primarily in the northern and western areas. It's definitely not a nationwide outage because we have the physical diversity in place."

By 11am Thursday, services to 60,000 broadband customers were restored to 76 per cent. Meanwhile, services to 46,000 mio-TV customers were restored to 67 per cent.

SingTel explained that services like banking as well as ATMs were affected as the telco aids in their communication transactions.

For example, SingTel provides connectivity to ATMs which allows users to check their withdrawal amounts.

The telco added compensation details will be revealed later.

- CNA/ir

- wong chee tat :)