Thousands of Singtel users report service outage, telco activates 'rectification measures'
Daniel Lai
The Straits Times
March 16, 2026
Telecommunications company Singtel said its services were being progressively restored after thousands of customers reported service outages on the morning of March 16.
Reports of a service outage started at about 10.30am with 827 reports, with the number of reports on Downdetector peaking at 5,330 at 11.04am. Downdetector tracks outages by collating status reports from a number of sources.
As at 1.08pm, the number of reports reflected on the live tracker had dropped to 1,276.
Singtel said in a Facebook post at 12.01pm that its engineers had identified the issue and that "rectification measures" had been activated. It did not state what the issue was.
In a later update at 1.18pm, it said that its services were being progressively restored.
Singtel acknowledged earlier at 11.12am that some customers may be experiencing issues with their mobile services, and that its engineers were investigating the issue. Customers were advised to switch off and on their devices to help restore mobile connectivity.
The company apologised to its customers for any inconvenience caused.
Payment services group NETS in a Facebook post at 12.35pm said the Singtel mobile connectivity issue may impact some transactions on NETS terminals and QR payments, adding that it is working "closely" with the telco operator to resolve the issue.
Previously, a mobile service outage affected Singtel customers for six hours in Nov 2025.
And in October 2024, an unprecedented islandwide disruption involving Singtel's telecommunications network saw hotlines of the Singapore Civil Defence Force and police, as well as those of hospitals and banks, rendered unreachable.
The telco operator was fined $1 million over the fixed-line outage incident on Oct 8 that year that affected 500,000 users for more than four hours.
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