Jul 21, 2010
MDA fines SingNet $50,000
<!-- by line --> By Chua Hian Hou
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ST PHOTO: DESMOND FOO
SINGNET has been fined $50,000 for a half-day pay-TV outage earlier this year. The 12-hour outage from 6am to 6pm on March 1, which was caused by a software glitch, affected 10,000 households. The penalty was announced on Wednesday by media sector regulator Media Development Authority of Singapore (MDA). In a statement, it said it had decided to fine SingNet because it had failed to meet certain licensing obligations as a national pay-TV provider.
SingNet 'has to provide pay TV services at a reasonable quality that meets public expectations and is satisfactory to MDA. In addition, SingNet is also required to operate an efficient consumer service and provide avenues for speedy resolution of consumers' complaints on its service'. While SingNet 'took efforts to correct the software malfunction and resume service ... the outage impacted more than 10,000 subscribers which is not insignificant and caused a lot of inconveniences'.
In addition, SingNet 'could also have provided better consumer support and resolved consumer complaints in a timely manner. SingNet's call handling was evidently lacking when consumers complained that they could not get through to their call centre for hours, and even on the day after the breakdown'.
