SINGAPORE: The Infocomm Development Authority of
Singapore (IDA) has fined M1 S$300,000 for the service disruption
on 18 May which caused subscribers in the western part of Singapore
to experience difficulty in making and receiving
calls.
Subscribers also had difficulty accessing SMS, MMS
and mobile data services via mobile phones.
IDA said it has investigated the disruption and
found that M1 had not fulfilled its obligation to provide resilient
mobile telephone services.
The service disruption was caused by faulty hardware cards in M1's
back-end systems.
This affected the normal functioning of a database in M1's network
that is used to identify and update the location of M1 subscribers
at the western part of Singapore.
The service disruption affected more than 5 per cent of M1's base
stations, said IDA.
Due to the unique nature of the service incident, no alarms were
triggered in M1's monitoring system, which affected M1's initial
efforts in identifying and isolating the cause of the service
disruption.
IDA noted that the fault that caused the service disruption was not
foreseeable and not within M1's control and that M1 needed time to
identify and restore service.
But it said it deemed that M1's efforts to restore the services
expeditiously were not satisfactory.
In making its decision, IDA took into consideration the prolonged
delay in isolating and identifying the fault, and to restore
services.
IDA also considered mitigating factors such as M1's efforts to
compensate end-users.
IDA has also obtained M1's assurance that it has taken measures to
prevent similar occurrences in future.
In response, M1 said it would appeal against the fine because it
does not agree it had crossed the impact threshold of 5 percent of
base stations.
The telco also said that none of its base stations was down during
that service disruption.
- CNA/ir
