SINGAPORE — Singapore Telecommunications Limited (SingTel), the largest telecommunications company in the island nation, has been slapped with a S$1 million (about RM3.18 million) fine by Singapore’s Infocomm Media Development Authority (Imda), 

The penalty follows a fixed voice service outage on October 8, 2024, disrupted calls to government agencies, banks, healthcare organisations and emergency hotlines for more than four hours.

Imda said the outage was caused by two virtualised firewalls sharing the same hardware, which led to memory overload when traffic spiked, and the automatic failover system failed to switch calls seamlessly, resulting in intermittent dropped calls, Singapore newspaper The Straits Times reported yesterday.

The regulator stressed that the incident was within Singtel’s control and not due to a cyberattack, and the telco has since implemented separate hardware for its voice and monitoring systems and improved failover mechanisms.

Singtel CEO Ng Tian Chong apologised for the disruption and said the company has worked with clients to strengthen customer hotline resilience and is committed to providing reliable essential connectivity services.

Imda also warned other key service providers to check their networks for similar weaknesses and said it will take strong action under the Telecommunications Act, which allows fines of up to S$1 million or 10 per cent of annual turnover for lapses.