SINGAPORE: An hours-long Singtel landline outage on Tuesday (Oct 8) disrupted calls to emergency servicespayjoy, healthcare institutions, banks and businesses in what the telco said was an "isolated incident".
"There's no evidence to suggest it is a cyber-related event," Singtel said in a statement.
The disruption started at around 2pm, affecting residential, corporate and public services.
Calls to 995 and 999 were affected, said the Singapore Civil Defence Force (SCDF) and the Singapore Police Force (SPF).
"Members of the public who are experiencing difficulties reaching us at 995 or 999 can SMS SCDF at 70995 or SPF at 70999 instead," they said on Facebook at about 4.30pm.
The Infocomm Media Development Authority (IMDA) said Singtel was required to restore services urgently, with emphasis on key government services.
"Services, including 999 and 995 hotlines, were progressively restored from 5pm, and all services have been restored by 6.30pm," IMDA said in response to CNA's queries.
"IMDA takes a serious view of any service disruption to public telecommunications services, and will investigate the incident."
"ISOLATED INCIDENT"Outage tracking website Downdetector showed users starting to flag issues with the landline services from about 2pm. At around 3.50pm, about 2,700 reports had been filed.
Singtel said that by 4.15pm, it was able to identify the issue and "rapidly deploy recovery measures".
"From 4.45pm, services were progressively restored, starting with emergency services," it added.
"This is an isolated incident and there's no evidence to suggest it is a cyber-related event. We are working diligently with our partners to investigate the root cause to prevent this from happening again."
Singtel said all other services including mobile and broadband services were unaffected.
Related:
Snap Insight: When landlines fail, those in need of urgent help are left vulnerable SINGHEALTH, BANKS AMONG THOSE AFFECTEDCustomer hotlines for a range of businesses and services were hit earlier on Tuesday.
SingHealth, which operates hospitals and polyclinics in the east, said at 4.20pm that its telephone appointment lines were temporarily unavailable due to the Singtel ISDN outage.
This refers to Singtel's Integrated Services Digital Network, which supports high-call-volume call centres and businesses.
It pointed patients to the SingHealth Health Buddy app for appointment and billing services. "Clinical services remain accessible and unaffected," SingHealth added.
KK Women's and Children's Hospital (KKH), the National Cancer Centre and Changi General Hospital (CGH) - all under SingHealth - similarly alerted the public to the issue.
All three said at about 6.30pm that their telephone lines had been restored.
Singapore's three local banks, DBS, UOB and OCBC, also reported issues with their customer hotlines.
DBS said that it was informed by NETS that the issue may also impact transactions such as QR, credit and debit, as well as NETS card transactions via some NETS terminals.
"In the meantime, you can use DBS/POSB digibank and PayLah! Scan & Pay SGQR codes, where applicable, and PayNow to make payments," it added.
UOB said its customers may be experiencing intermittent connection issues to its customer contact hotline, while OCBC said it was unable to receive calls made to its hotlines.
All three banks said in an update on Tuesday evening that their services were back online.
Tanjong Pagar Town Council stated that its phone lines were “temporarily down due to a Singtel service outage in the East and Central regions of Singapore”.
SimplyGo, which manages public transport ticketing services, encouraged commuters to submit any queries via its website feedback form. "Our hotline is currently unavailable due to Singtel's service outage," it said on its website.
"Please have this fixed asap," said one commenter on Singtel's Facebook post.
"We are running business and all payment terminals not working," wrote user Wilfred Chong.
If you would like to send in informationpayjoy, photos or videos about something newsworthy, submit your news tips on CNA Eyewitness or on WhatsApp.