SINGAPORE — A fire at a SingTel facility today (Oct 9) has affected
various companies, including local telcos StarHub and M1 as well as
DBS and OCBC banks.
OCBC said that services at 11 ATMs were affected, in locations such
as Changi Airport, Jurong Point, Woodlands, Bukit Panjang, while
DBS advised its customers to avoid DBS/POSB branches at Toa Payoh
Central, Bukit Panjang, Jurong Point, Woodlands and Raffles Place
until SingTel restores network connectivity.
DBS Bank said that the fire, which took place at SingTel’s Bukit
Panjang exchange at about 2pm, “affected a small proportion of
DBS/POSB branches, ATMs and AXS services”.
“All customers are assured that their funds are safe and the bank
is working closely with SingTel to restore services as soon as
possible,” said DBS Bank.
The bank tweeted that it is taking “proactive measures to minimise
service disruptions and will extend operating hours of all DBS and
POSB branches today by an hour”.
The Infocomm Development Authority of Singapore (IDA) said in a
statement that several operators have also reported to the IDA on
the fire,
“The incident has affected fixed line telephone, broadband, cable
TV and mobile services of several operators in the northern parts
of Singapore. This may have also have affected services relying on
such networks. IDA is currently investigating the issue,” said a
spokesperson.
StarHub said that the fire affected its cable and fibre services.
“As we lease some SingTel optical fibre capacity that runs through
this exchange, this has affected StarHub’s cable TV, cable and
fibre broadband, and digital voice services for some of our
customers,” said Mr Mock Pak Lum, StarHub’s Chief Technology
Officer.
“We are monitoring the situation closely and working to restore
services as soon as we can,” he said.
M1 said in a Facebook post that its fibre broadband services in the
Bukit Panjang area have been impacted and that the waiting time at
its Causeway Point M1 Shop is “significantly longer than usual as
the systems there have been impacted by the fire at SingTel’s Bukit
Panjang exchange”.
Others affected by the outage include the Singapore Turf Club and
Singapore Pools.
At about 3,30pm today, SingTel posted an update on its Facebook
page, saying: “There has been a fire at our Bukit Panjang exchange
and this may have affected some fixed line voice, broadband and
mobile services.”
According to posts on SingTel’s Facebook page, users in the
North-west region of Singapore such as Bukit Panjang, Choa Chu
Kang, Woodlands and Yew Tee started experiencing problems with
their network services from around 2pm.
Woodlands resident, Ms Fidya Nurane, 19, said that her mioTV went
blank at around 3pm. She added that she was unable to send out text
messages to other Singtel users. Her wifi connection was still down
as of 5.20pm.
An employee at a company located at Boon Keng said the Internet in
her office was down starting from around 2pm. She added that
workers were unable to connect to the company’s network drive and
that the data plan for SingTel mobile users was also affected.
Affected users are also saying that they are unable to get through
the telco’s 1688 helpline. SingTel has said that it is “working to
restore services as soon as possible”.
The Singapore Civil Defence Force said that it received a call at
2.16pm to attend to the fire. The fire broke out at a cable room in
level one of the building, located at 40 Woodlands Road. The fire
was extinguished in 20 minutes by two water jets. No injuries were
reported.
TODAY
