There were more than 2,500 reports as at 3.10pm on service outage website Downdetector.SINGAPORE - The hotlines of the Singapore Civil Defence Force and police, as well as those of hospitals and banks, could not be reached on Oct 8 in an unprecedented islandwide disruption on Singtel's telecommunications network.
In a Facebook post at around 4.20pm, the SCDF and police urged members of the public to use SMS instead. Hospitals and medical centres affected include KK Women's and Children's Hospital, Changi General Hospital , Singapore General Hospital , SingHealth and the National Cancer Centre Singapore. A National University Hospital System spokesperson said the organisation was alerted to intermittent connection issues affecting its' phone lines in the afternoon, due to the disruption.
In its Facebook post at around 4.50pm, DBS also said: "We have also been informed by Nets that this industry-wide issue may also impact transactions, such as QR, credit and debit, and Nets card transactions, via some Nets terminals." A Singtel spokesman acknowledged the problem at around 3.45pm. Its first post on Facebook went out at around 4.30pm noting that some of its customers including public service hotlines "may be experiencing intermittent fixed voice service issues".