Debated in Parliament on 11 Nov 2024.
Ms See Jinli Jean asked the Minister for Digital Development and Information in light of Singtel's outage on 8 October 2024 which affected calls to the Police and SCDF (a) whether the Government has data on the number of users who were not able to access (i) emergency hotlines and (ii) essential services; (b) how did the Ministry and Singtel assist the impacted Ministries and providers to attend to affected users; (c) how quickly was this assistance rendered; and (d) what measures are being introduced to address such vulnerabilities and their impact on seniors and less digitally connected persons.
I will answer Parliamentary Question Nos 11 to 16 on today's Order Paper as well as written Parliamentary Question No 23 on today's Order Paper, filed by Member of Parliament See Jinli Jean, together as they relate to the same incident. [Please refer to "Root Cause for Singtel's Recent Outage, Impact of Disruption to Essential Services and Measures to Ensure Telecom Operational Continuity and Resilience", Official Report, 11 November 2024, Vol 95, Issue 145, Oral Answers to Questions section.]
On 8 October 2024, Singtel's fixed line voice service faced intermittent service disruption. This affected some residential and corporate users, including Government emergency phone lines, such as the Singapore Civil Defence Force's (SCDF's) 995 and Singapore Police Force's (SPF's) 999, and customer service lines for some Government agencies, healthcare organisations and companies. The Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) and the Ministry of Health will be responding to queries on the service impact on their respective sectors arising from the incident. During the disruption, it is estimated that half of the calls could still be connected. All services were progressively restored over four hours after the start of the incident.
The Infocomm Media Development Authority (IMDA) takes a serious view of this incident and is investigating the cause of this disruption and whether Singtel's incident response was adequate. Preliminary findings suggest that there was a technical issue, which affected the proper functioning of a network component in one of the two systems supporting Singtel's fixed line voice service. The two systems, located in separate telephone exchanges, are designed to immediately take over the full load of the other when one system malfunctions. However, in this instance, the failover did not happen seamlessly, which caused the intermittent service disruption. There is no evidence to suggest that the incident was related to a sabotage or cyberattack. IMDA is continuing its investigations.
The telecommunication network in Singapore is a key infrastructure that supports our nation's connectivity needs and requirements. IMDA holds key service providers, like Singtel, to high service standards and requires them to conduct regular audits on their network and infrastructure. This includes, ensuring the security of network design, redundancy measures and business continuity plans. Service providers must also ensure that their networks are resilient against disruptions. IMDA will not hesitate to take strong action under the Telecommunication Act, including imposing financial penalties, should any lapses be identified. IMDA is working with MHA, SCDF and SPF to conduct a comprehensive after-action review on the availability of our emergency hotlines when disruptions occur.
PAPERCUTS