SingTel customers hit by service disruption in northern, western S'pore

SingTel customers in the northern and western part of Singapore experienced erratic 3G mobile service on Tuesday evening.

A subscriber Marcus Ng posted on SingTel's Facebook at about 5pm that he had experienced unstable connection to the service. Ng said that he started experiencing the disruption after the MRT train he was on passed by Bukit Batok.

The disruption caused a number of problems. Users complained that they were unable to make or receive calls and SMSes, surf the web and experienced poor call quality.

At about 9pm, SingTel sent an update on their Facebook page, confirming the service disruption and recommended its customers to switch to the 2G network.

Shortly before midnight, SingTel posted an update which said "all 3G services in affected areas have been normalised since 9:40pm".

It advised customers to switch their phones off and on if they are still having difficulties and continue to monitor the situation. It also apologised to its customers for the inconvenience and thanked them fortheir patience.

However, many disgruntled SingTel customers are still asking the telco company for compensation.

Facebook user Mun Kit wrote, "I cannot come to terms that I paid for unreliable 3G services."

Another Facebook user Dhum Liriah asked, "Do we get any rebates for our next bill? I don't think we have to pay so much for some screwed up services."

Others suggested SingTel to send an SMS update to its subscribers instead of posting the update online.

"SingTel should probably send SMS alerts to your users. If people face issue with 3G, how do you expect them to be online to check this post?" said Facebook user Purnish Jain.

In May last year, M1 subscribers suffered a similar glitch where some users were unable to make phone calls or send SMSes.

The telco company apologised by providing free local mobile calls, text messages and multimedia messages for a full day.