Zit Seng's Blog

A Singaporean's technology and lifestyle blog

Problem With SingTel Mobile Network?

Has anyone noticed problems with the SingTel Mobile network this evening? I just started to observe the problem at around 18:55 in the evening, although I’ve heard from others that the problem had started earlier. Basically, my phone could not connect to the network. No signal at all. I was getting out of my house, and some 5 minutes drive away, I got a signal, but a SMS text message I was trying to send did not get sent.

At that point, I tried to make a phone call. The call was connected. But shortly later, I lost signal again. Then it came back again. The SMS text message was still unsuccessful. Mobile broadband Internet surfing did not work. Other people have reported a combination of various problems.

In general, things seemed to have gone back to normal by about 19:40. But I’ve just noticed right now as I type, already after 21:00, that my phone can’t pick up a 3G connection. There is a normal GSM (2.5G) connection, but no go for UMTS (3G). I gave up waiting to speak to a person at 1626; I imagine the hotline must be overwhelmed from customer calls.

We are definitely quite dependent on mobile phone networks. A downtime like this causes great inconveniences. It might have been worse considering if you had to make an emergency call, and the call could not be connected.

It’s scary to think about disruptions to critical infrastructure. A fire at a substation in Somerset Road can somehow cause over-voltage conditions in several areas around Singapore. An outage at one data centre in Singapore can cause massive disruptions to many online government systems. Are we getting complacent about the availability and robustness of our infrastructure?

6 thoughts on “Problem With SingTel Mobile Network?

  1. mintea had internet problems on singtel network.. hmm.
    im on singtel, but 2G. n it was fine…

    perhaps its only the 3G network. did u try switching over to 2G?

  2. I did a google and found this page. I’ve been having problems since mid afternoon. And it’s now 12:13am 11th July yet service is still not restored. It’s intermittently getting and losing signals… can’t call or sms when that happens…

    Calling 1626 doesn’t help now and the automated system ask me to call back at 8am in the morning… talk about customer service… service quality for Singtel is getting really bad recently. It’s not the first time… and I changed my phone when I thought I had problems with it. End up the problems persisted and I changed SIM card as well.

    Just one word, frustrating…

  3. Just called ChannelNewsAsia hotline… was told that they received quite a few calls relating to this. It’s CONFIRMED… Singtel’s network is DOWN… the last update they got from Singtel is at 6+pm…

    It just pisses me off that they dun even list it out on their website to inform users about it. It’s like a hush hush thing…

    It’s midnight now… the network is still down… Good job Singtel…

  4. Wow, it must be real bad if it had started from mid afternoon. Come to think of it, I did have some problems with mobile broadband in the afternoon too, but I had assume there was some Internet/server problems rather than problem with mobile network, because I was still able to make/receive calls at that time.

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