SINGNET has been fined $50,000 for a half-day pay-TV outage
earlier this year.
The 12-hour outage between 6am to 6pm on Mar 1, which was caused
by a software glitch, affected 10,000 households.
The penalty was announced on Wednesday by media sector regulator
Media Development Authority of Singapore (MDA).
In a statement, it said it had decided to fine SingNet because
it had failed to meet certain licensing obligations as a national
pay-TV provider.
SingNet 'has to provide pay TV services at a reasonable quality
that meets public expectations and is satisfactory to MDA. In
addition, SingNet is also required to operate an efficient consumer
service and provide avenues for speedy resolution of consumers'
complaints on its service'.
While SingNet 'took efforts to correct the software malfunction
and resume service ... the outage impacted more than 10,000
subscribers which is not insignificant and caused a lot of
inconveniences'.
In addition, SingNet 'could also have provided better consumer
support and resolved consumer complaints in a timely manner.
SingNet's call handling was evidently lacking when consumers
complained that they could not get through to their call centre for
hours, and even on the day after the breakdown'.
-- ST
