SingTel has tracked down the cause of the exchange fire which caused widespread disruption to Singapore telecom services last month – an employee using an unauthorized blowtorch.
The employee in question had not followed proper maintenance procedures during work at the Bukit Panjang Exchange, SingTel announced.
In the process, one of three lead-in pipes housing cables connecting to customer homes and businesses was damaged. The fire damaged 81 fiber cables operated by NG-NBN NetCo OpenNet, causing disruptions to some fixed-line connections provided by SingTel as well as StarHub and M1. Around 100 SingTel base stations were also disrupted by the disaster.
In the wake of the fire, SingTel said it had implemented measures designed to prevent a recurrence of such an event. These include limiting maintenance work for which heat needs to be applied, introducing new tools and equipment and reinforcing safety training for its technicians.
The SingTel Board Committee of Inquiry is conducting a concurrent independent review into the incident, SingTel added, and plans to make the findings public once they are available.
“We recognise the importance of reliable communication services to customers and Singapore’s status as a leading financial and business hub. We apologise unreservedly to all our customers for any inconvenience caused,” SingTel group CEO Chua Sock Koong said.
Singapore's regulator IDA also takes outages very seriously. Last month, the company fined M1 a record S$1.5 million ($1.2 million) for a January outage caused by an electrical failure triggering fire suppression systems.