Updated: 12/12/2013 18:35 | By Channel NewsAsia
MDA fines SingNet S$220,000 for Mio TV service disruption in May
SINGAPORE: The Media Development Authority (MDA) has fined SingNet S$220,000 for an island-wide Mio TV service disruption on May 15, 2013.
The incident, which occurred at around 1am, lasted about nine hours and affected some 26,000 Mio TV subscribers across Singapore.
Those impacted reported that they could not boot up their Mio TV set-top boxes to view the channels they had subscribed to.
The issue was eventually resolved at around 10am on the same day.
MDA said investigations revealed the incident was triggered by a maintenance activity carried out on May 14 and 15.
The routine maintenance involved the replication of video-on-demand content to another server, but the operation failed as the hard disk of the receiving server was full.
While attempting to recover the failed operation, a wrong recovery command was subsequently keyed in by SingNet's contractor, resulting in the set-top boxes of subscribers failing to boot up properly.
As a Nationwide Subscription Television Service Licensee, SingNet must comply with licence conditions on Quality of Service (QoS), which requires pay-TV services to be provided at reasonable quality that meets public expectations and is satisfactory to the MDA.
MDA assessed that SingNet had not exercised due care and diligence when carrying out routine maintenance activities during the incident.
MDA thus found SingNet to be in contravention of its QoS licence conditions, and has imposed a financial penalty of S$220,000.
In determining the financial penalty, MDA took into consideration factors such as the service record of the licensee, the extent and duration of the disruption, and the compensation offered by the licensee to its subscribers.
MDA said this was the third time in two years that SingNet had been found in breach of its Quality of Service (QoS) licence conditions.
It was fined S$80,000 and S$180,000 for past service disruptions.
MDA noted that following the disruption on May 15, 2013, SingNet has provided compensation to affected Mio TV subscribers in the form of a free one-month preview of all its channels and/or gift vouchers. - CNA/gn
