Causes and Follow-up Actions for March 2026 Disruptions on Singtel’s Mobile Network

Mr Melvin Yong Yik Chye asked the Minister for Digital Development and Information arising from the recent service disruptions affecting Singtel customers over three consecutive days, whether IMDA will review and strengthen its requirements on telecommunications network resilience, including ensuring that failover systems are robust and effective under real-world conditions.

Dr Neo Kok Beng asked the Minister for Digital Development and Information in view of the recent Singtel mobile service outage on 16 March 2026 which caused much business and personal disruption, whether the Ministry will consider introducing regulations to require telecommunications networks to facilitate temporary mobile service switches to subscribers affected by disruptions.

Ms Poh Li San asked the Minister for Digital Development and Information (a) what are the causes of the 16 March 2026 disruption on Singtel’s mobile network; (b) how many users were affected; and (c) whether IMDA has any plan to review the minimum level of redundancy required for telecommunications networks, given increasing reliance for mobile services.

Mr Speaker, my response will cover the questions raised by Ms Poh Li San, Dr Neo Kok Beng, Mr Ang Wei Neng, Mr Melvin Yong and Ms Elysa Chen in today’s Order Paper, as well as related questions filed by Ms Joan Pereira1, Mr Gerald Giam2 and Mr Alex Yeo3 for tomorrow's Sitting. If Members are satisfied with the response, they may wish to withdraw their questions after this session.

Sir, between 16 and 18 March 2026, Singtel experienced difficulties with its mobile service network. Based on preliminary reports, an incident on 16 March affected more than 600,000 Singtel mobile customers. While services were progressively recovered, the disruption lasted for about nine hours. The cause of the incident was attributed to a mechanical fault at one of Singtel’s network facilities.

A separate incident reported on 17 March affected about 2,000 Singtel mobile customers and was attributed to a software bug from a planned IT system update.

On 18 March, some Singtel mobile customers experienced intermittent connectivity issues during peak network traffic in the late afternoon. Singtel indicated that these issues were resolved within an hour.

The Infocomm Media Development Authority (IMDA) is investigating the incidents. Thus far, there is no evidence that the incidents were due to cyberattacks. IMDA is also investigating whether calls to emergency services were affected by the incidents, even though there are no such reports thus far.

I would like to assure Members that the Ministry of Digital Development and Information (MDDI) and IMDA take all service disruptions seriously, and we recognise the concerns raised. Service providers are held to high service standards through the Telecommunications Act and the Telecom Service Resiliency Code. For example, service providers are required to ensure that service incidents are resolved within one hour, failing which IMDA may take enforcement actions and impose financial penalties. Among other measures, service providers are required to conduct regular audits on key telecom infrastructure for resilience. They are also required to uphold stringent quality of service standards, such as ensuring more than 99% nation-wide outdoor mobile service coverage at all times.

While disruptions cannot always be prevented, IMDA requires key service providers, like Singtel, to put in place robust measures to contain their impact and ensure speedy recovery. This includes providing redundancies and failover systems for core network functions.

IMDA also regularly reviews its regulatory frameworks to ensure that they remain relevant. This includes updating regulations to protect our submarine cables in 2022 and to enhance the cybersecurity of key telecom operators in 2023. IMDA is reviewing telecom service resilience regulations to ensure they remain effective.

It has been about three weeks since the incidents. We note that Singtel has provided one-time rebates for affected mobile subscribers as part of their service recovery. In the meantime, IMDA’s investigations are ongoing. It will publish its findings after investigations are completed and will not hesitate to take strong regulatory action should any lapses be identified.

We also thank Members for their suggestions. These will be assessed for the ongoing review of telecom service resilience regulations, together with other suggestions that IMDA or the industry have put forward.

Thank you, Speaker, and I thank the Minister for the comprehensive reply. Can I just ask for clarification on the three incidents of Singtel disruption? It was reported by the press that they were totally unrelated. What was the preliminary investigation based on the finding of IMDA? Secondly, did IMDA or MDDI require Singtel to do the compensation as what they had done in service recovery or is it purely their own effort? And thirdly, will the service recovery be part of the requirement by IMDA or MDDI for other telecom companies (telcos) with similar incidents?

Mr Speaker, I thank the Member for his questions. Because investigations are still ongoing, I will not want to prejudge the outcome. We do not rule out entirely that the incidents are related in some way, but the extent of the relations is yet to be firmly established, so it is better to let the investigators complete their work. It is clear, however, that, for now, there is no evidence to suggest that any of the incidents that have been reported were cyber-related.

As to the question that the Member raised about the compensation, this was done on Singtel's own volition. Around the world, if we look at various jurisdictions, we do not know of anyone that require telcos to make compensation for service disruptions. [Please refer to ​"Clarification by Minister for Digital Development and Information", Official Report, 7 April 2026, Vol 96, Issue 27, Correction By Written Statement section.]

Part of the reason is because in most markets, telecom services are quite competitive. Meaning that from the provider standpoint, there is an interest on their part to maintain goodwill with their customers. And so, in this instance, Singtel has decided that the service disruption lasted long enough. It impacted a wide swath of people. Many of their customers were inconvenienced. And they decided that they would offer a one-time rebate as part of their own service recovery.

Sir, I thank the Minister for her answers. I have two questions.

First, whether IMDA currently mandates stress testing or simulation of failover systems under peak or adverse conditions and if not, whether such requirements will be introduced following IMDA's review. Second, even if such continuous incidents are infrequent, the impact of such disruptions on both consumers and businesses is significant, and I feel there should be greater safeguards. So, will IMDA consider introducing more stringent resilience benchmarks on the telcos?

Mr Speaker, the short answer to the Member's question is yes. The stress testing obviously has to take place, but as we complete the investigations, we may find that there are parts of a system where the stress testing is not as good as it needs to be. So, this will then inform our understanding of the extent to which we need to then strengthen the regulations and put in place the right set of obligations and expectations.

I can assure the Member that we will take this very seriously.

Just to say that our telecom networks have become much more complex. We continuously introduce new service enhancements. From 3G to 4G to 5G and of course, in today's context, the system is also needing to respond to greater user needs, for example, in AI-enabled tools. We fully appreciate what the Member has said. Members of the public, whether businesses or individuals, are depending on these services, so in terms of their reliability, the expectation is certainly rightly high.

I would like to provide some context to assure the Member that we track these performance issues very carefully. If we look at telecom incidents and look at the period 2016 to 2020, compared to 2021 to 2025 – two big blocks, because annual numbers may not be fully reflective. If we look at five-year blocks, it was an average of eight incidents in the period 2016 to 2020. In the more recent five-year period, 2021 to 2025, that has come down to an average of six incidents per year. The average duration of the incidents has also come down from eight hours to six-and-a-half hours.

Is there room for improvement? The answer is yes. And part of the purpose of investigations is to arrive at a better understanding of how the system components are interacting with one another and where we need to strengthen the measures.

Mr Speaker, Sir, I thank the Minister for the reply on the telcos, especially on the stress tests and the redundancies. I would like to ask whether the telcos network exist independently, by themselves, or are interconnected with other telcos operators'. If IMDA in view of resiliency of our telephone network, would they consider regulations for them to work together, such that if there is any outage, there will be automatic switch-over from one telco to another telco, so that services to the subscribers are not disrupted? A simple example would be like we move to another country or we visit another country, and then we auto roam. I am a telco engineer, so I know a little bit.

Mr Speaker, I thank the Member for his suggestion, and we will continue to study it. But preliminarily, I would say that, even if there was mobile switching available. It would not be able to respond to all kinds of service disruptions. It depends on which part of the network has gone down. And maybe some parts of the network can be switchable between telcos, some parts of the network will not be able to do so.

There maybe other kinds of mobile switching options available, but they will inevitably involve some cost, and it is not clear that subscribers are willing to pay for these additional features. That is something that we also have to keep in mind.

I should add that in the Singapore context, wireless services are readily available. So, looking at the issue from the point of view of a user, if you are able to get to a wireless network, there are also messaging services that you can rely on. That is the option that many people currently rely on and remains something that is quite viable.

Sir, I thank the Minister for her answers. I just wanted to ask the Minister, for outages, as we have spoken in this House, consumers and businesses are most affected. One of the things that, if we hear from the ground, is that there is no real-time live information on how long the outages are going to be, what is the reasons for it and so on.

I understand, like in Australia, they have a live outage register. Would the IMDA consider mandating telcos to provide real-time live information whenever any of these outages occur, rather than for consumers and businesses to wait for them to issue a press statement before finding out more information about these issues?

Mr Speaker, I think service providers can certainly improve the timeliness of their updates to their subscribers as well as to members of the public. Today, quite a lot of the information on outages is crowdsourced. There is something called "Downdetector" that people very frequently refer to. By and large, it is quite reliable and it gives a very good sense of what is going on.

But I take the Member's point. In terms of our investigations, in terms of how we assess the incident response by the service providers, we will also look at how well they have done in terms of communicating with their subscribers and members of the public.

I thank the Minister for the replies. Sir, the fines paid by telcos for service disruptions go into the consolidated fund, so they do not directly benefit affected consumers and businesses. The $5 to $10 goodwill rebates given out by Singtel and GOMO are not legally mandated, and these amounts may be small compared to the losses suffered by customers.

I understand that in some European countries, consumers actually do have a legal right to compensation in the event of service failures.

If the Ministry will not mandate compensation, what accessible recourse is available to consumers and small businesses to recover financial losses due to these network failures, given that legal action may be prohibitive? How will the Ministry ensure that financial penalties for service lapses are high enough to act as a genuine deterrent, rather than a cheaper alternative to investing in network reliability, especially at the higher end of the reliability range?

And next, given the recent history of state-sponsored cyberattacks on our telcos, did IMDA and the Cyber Security Agency (CSA) conduct their own independent and thorough cybersecurity investigations beyond Singtel's internal investigations to arrive at their own conclusions and if so, did they uncover anything new?

Mr Speaker, the telco service providers have different commercial arrangements. In some instances, with bigger customers, they may indeed have built into their contracts conditions upon which compensation would be due. We are not privy to all the details of these arrangements. But I can say to the Member that they do exist. Some customers may already be seeking damages from the telco service providers when an incident of this nature happens.

He may be referring to individual consumers. And when he talks about some European jurisdictions, we are only aware of the United Kingdom and Germany having in place arrangements that he may be referring to. In these two countries, the regulators require compensation, but the scope is quite limited, such as for loss of service for broadband or landline only, which the incidents that took place in March for Singtel, would also not have qualified. [Please refer to ​"Clarification by Minister for Digital Development and Information", Official Report, 7 April 2026, Vol 96, Issue 27, Correction By Written Statement section.]

Nonetheless, it is not a common requirement. We are prepared to look at the suggestion.

I would just add two points. One is that on their own volition, because of competitive reasons and the need to maintain customer goodwill, in this instance, Singtel has decided to pay a one-time rebate to their customers. I think a competitive market does have this effect on the service providers. They know not to assume that the customers cannot change providers. That is one feature of the way the market works that gives the consumers some assurance that the service providers need to be up to mark in terms of service resilience and reliability.

The other thing is that in response to the earlier question by Mr Melvin Yong, I had cited how the regulations have also helped to reduce the number of incidents as well as the average duration per incident. And we will continue to look at how regulations can be strengthened in support of such improvements.

Finally, to the question posed by the Member regarding state-sponsored Advanced Persistent Threat actors, whether IMDA does its own investigations. The short answer is that IMDA, together with CSA, will have to look very seriously into these issues. We have, on previous occasions, updated the public about findings that could be made known. Of course, the work continues.