All Singtel mobile customers to get 'goodwill rebate' over recent network disruption

SINGAPORE: Singtel announced on Tuesday (Mar 31) that all mobile customers will receive "goodwill" rebates following a series of disruptions earlier this month.

The rebates will be reflected on customers' bills within the next one to two billing cycles, with no action required, the telco said in messages to customers.

Singtel did not specify the amounts involved, but CNA is aware of customers being notified of rebates of S$5 (US$3.90) and S$10. 

The rebate has been assessed based on the customers' services with Singtel, a spokesperson for the telco said in response to CNA queries.

All prepaid customers will also be given 50GB of data, the spokesperson said.

Customers will be progressively informed of this from Apr 2 to Apr 7, the spokesperson added. 

"We sincerely apologise for the recent network disruption," Singtel said in messages to customers announcing the S$5 rebate.

"Singtel deeply regrets the recent incidents and has applied additional network enhancements to improve resilience," it added.

"We know how important staying connected is. As a small gesture, you'll receive a S$5 goodwill rebate on your bill."

The Singtel spokesperson also said that it is "reaching out to affected customers via SMS with a token of appreciation for their patience during this period".

Singtel users previously reported mobile disruptions for three consecutive days from Mar 16 to 18, with the first disruption lasting nine hours.

In an apology, Singtel CEO Ng Tian Chong said on Mar 19 that the disruptions were caused by a "mechanical fault" and "should not have happened".

On Mar 16, around 15 per cent of Singtel users started experiencing mobile connectivity issues from about 10.30am. 

Though 4G services were restored by around 1.30pm and 5G services were progressively from 2.45pm, full 5G services were not restored until around 8pm that day.

In a separate incident a day later, around 2,000 customers faced mobile connectivity issues due to "a software bug from an earlier pre-planned IT system upgrade".

The issue was resolved around 4pm that day.

Following the outages, Singtel carried out some network reconfigurations on Mar 18 to "further stabilise and optimise performance", during which there was a brief spike in network traffic at around 5.30pm.

The issue was resolved within about an hour, Mr Ng said, adding that the events were unrelated.

Another disruption occurred on Mar 23, which saw more than 9,000 reports on Downdetector, which collates status reports from several sources. This disruption was caused by an "international traffic optimisation issue" unrelated to the previous outages.