SINGAPORE: A Singtel landline outage on Tuesday (Oct 8) disrupted calls to emergency services, healthcare institutions, banks and businesses.
The Singapore Civil Defence Force (SCDF) and the Singapore Police Force (SPF) said calls to 995 and 999 were affected, adding that they were working closely with the service provider to resolve the matter.
“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.
“The safety and well-being of the public is our top priority. We will provide updates as soon as more information becomes available.”
Singtel alerted customers to the issue in a Facebook post at about 3.40pm. At around 3.50pm, more than 2,700 reports relating to the telco had been filed on outage tracking website Downdetector.
In an update at about 5.05pm, Singtel said its engineers have isolated the problem.
“Recovery measures are being rapidly deployed and services are progressively being restored. We apologise for the inconvenience caused and thank you for your patience,” it added.
All mobile and broadband services remain unaffected.
SINGHEALTH, BANKS AMONG THOSE AFFECTED
Customer hotlines for a range of businesses and services were affected.
SingHealth, which operates hospitals and polyclinics in the east, said 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.
“Due to a technical fault, all our phone lines are currently down,” said KKH, adding that those with appointment matters may email centralappt [at] kkh.com.sg.
CGH patients who require help with their appointments or medication orders can use the HealthBuddy app or contact the hospital via email.
Emergency queries can be directed to 81211429, 97888033 and 96514253, said CGH in a Facebook post.
Singapore’s three local banks, DBS, UOB and OCBC, also reported issues with their customer hotlines.
“We have been informed by our telco provider that they are facing technical issues that are impacting our customer care hotlines. We are working closely with them to resolve this industry-wide issue as soon as possible,” DBS said on Facebook.
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.
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.
Payment provider NETS said some transactions may be affected.
“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.
