IMDA to probe MyRepublic for potential regulatory breaches after broadband outage

Telecom operators must provide adequate redundancy, backups and diversity arrangements within their networks, says the authority

THE Infocomm Media Development Authority (IMDA) will investigate MyRepublic’s fibre broadband outage to determine if the telco has breached any regulations.

“Telecom operators such as MyRepublic must provide adequate redundancy, backups and diversity arrangements within their networks,” said IMDA on Wednesday (Oct 2) in an e-mail response to The Business Times.

This comes two days after MyRepublic’s fibre broadband customers suffered a fourth outage in three months.

Outage tracking website Downdetector had shown that there were more than 200 reports of issues faced by customers since 2 pm on Monday.

Two hours later that afternoon, MyRepublic said on its website that it was aware of a “potential network broadband connectivity issue” affecting some customers in the north-eastern area.

On Tuesday, the telco noted that connections were being fixed in stages and that the situation seemed “under control”.

However, data from Downdetector revealed that customers were still filing reports of problems, though the number of reports was down from Monday.

A spokesperson from MyRepublic also told BT on Tuesday that the telco recently undertook a “partial back-end migration” and was proactively working on issues that arose from that exercise.

MyRepublic reported an issue on Sep 29 similar to the one on Monday; it appeared to have been resolved in three hours. Its fibre broadband service was previously down on Sep 11 and Jul 21.