3G network outage perplexes SingTel Mobile

SingTel Mobile’s two-year-old USD220 million 3G network went down yesterday, disrupting services to the company’s 259,000 UMTS users for seven hours. Subscribers had to switch to the cellco’s other networks after the Ericsson-built system shut down at 10am local time. A spokesman for SingTel said the disruption, which ended at 5pm, was ‘intermittent’ and that it was investigating the cause of the outage. A recorded voice message on the company’s customer hotline reported it was ‘experiencing congestion on [its] 3G network’ and advised users to switch to its other networks. The country’s regulator, the Infocomm Development Authority of Singapore (IDA), is monitoring the situation and says it will ‘not hesitate to take appropriate actions’ if it discovers evidence of a breach of regulations.