Commentary on Singtel disruption was spot-on, Latest Views News - The New Paper
Views

Commentary on Singtel disruption was spot-on

This article is more than 12 months old

DENIS DISTANT

I refer to columnist S.M. Ong's piece, "The day Singtel broadband went down" (The New Paper, Dec 5).You did a great job in filling the vacuum left by others in the media in covering this issue.

Singtel failed, too. Its 1688 line was taken over by a computer telling callers to call back another day as everyone was too busy.

And local TV seemed to be more interested in what was happening in Jakarta, Kuala Lumpur and Myanmar.

You raised very valid points, like since when has Facebook become the main channel used to keep Singaporeans informed?

When I finally got through to a human voice after hanging on to the phone for almost half-an-hour of a repeated apology for keeping me waiting, I asked why Singtel had not put out any announcement, and I was told it was on Facebook.

I told her not everyone in Singapore is addicted to Facebook and suggested she convey my comment to her CEO who may not be aware of that.

It was this 1688 responder who told me how to get on the Internet using my iPad, with data charges waived. When I asked who would ensure there would be no charge, she said it was programmed in, so now I wonder, how come you got the notice you had exceeded your monthly quota?The first indication I got that something was wrong was a message on my screen showing three devices and some cables and a message to check that all wires were plugged into the devices. Since I don't have pets or children in the house playing with cables, that surely was not the cause of the outage.

Later, I got a message asking for my phone number to enable a check to be done. A few minutes after that I was told the test had been completed but not a word of the result, and still nothing worked.

Now it seems we will get a 10 per cent discount off our fibre broadband charge, in my case $5.60. I will write to Singtel to keep the $5.60, and instead let me know what really went wrong.

So once again, thank you, Mr Ong.

SINGTELTelcointernet