Broadband Outage Hits Around 2,000 Customers in Bishan and Thomson

Around 2,000 broadband connections in parts of Bishan and Thomson were disrupted on Tuesday (Sept 15) after multiple fibre cables were damaged during construction works.

Customers of Singtel, StarHub, M1 and Simba were among those affected by the outage, with the disruption beginning in the afternoon.

NetLink Trust, which operates Singapore’s nationwide fibre network infrastructure, said its preliminary investigation found that multiple fibre cables had been damaged by a third-party contractor carrying out road-widening works. The contractor was not engaged by NetLink Trust.

Singtel said it had been informed of a fibre service outage in Bishan and that its engineers were working with NetLink Trust to investigate the problem.

StarHub similarly said some customers were experiencing broadband disruptions because of a fibre cut affecting multiple operators, while M1 said customers in parts of Bishan and Thomson could be affected.

NetLink Trust initially estimated that about 1,200 connections could be affected before revising the figure to approximately 2,000.

Repair teams were deployed to the affected site, but restoration efforts were complicated by water entering the damaged area and obstructions limiting access to the underground cables.

NetLink Trust said affected services were being progressively restored and teams would work through the night to repair the damaged cables. It initially targeted full restoration by Wednesday morning, subject to the extent of the damage and progress of repair works.

The disruption caused a spike in outage reports for several internet providers on Downdetector during Tuesday afternoon.

Singtel later clarified that its mobile services were not affected and continued operating normally.

The outage comes months after another NetLink Trust fibre cable damage incident in April disrupted broadband services for about 5,000 users across parts of central and north-eastern Singapore.