Compensation to Consumers for Telco Service Disruptions

Mr Teo Siong Seng asked the Minister for Information, Communications and the Arts in view of SingTel's 3G service outage in September 2011, whether his Ministry will consider imposing an obligation on SingTel to give rebates to subscribers who experienced major disruptions in their mobile phone usage for this service outage; and imposing a similar obligation on all telecommunications companies for such service disruptions in future.

Assoc Prof Dr Yaacob Ibrahim: IDA currently regulates the quality of mobile telecommunications services through the Code of Practice on Telecom Service Resiliency (Resiliency Code) and Quality of Service (QoS) framework.

The existing Resiliency Code ensures that operators adopt proactive measures to improve the resiliency of their mobile telecommunication networks in order to prevent widespread service disruption. In the event that such disruptions occur, it also ensures that operators take all necessary measures to restore services as quickly as possible. The QoS framework requires mobile operators to meet certain performance measures, such as providing network coverage at outdoor and in-buildings areas, as well as in road and MRT tunnels, under normal operating conditions. It also requires minimising dropped calls. Where operators fail to comply with the requirements set out in the Resiliency Code or fail to meet certain performance measures under the QoS framework, IDA is empowered to impose financial penalties. In the past year, IDA has penalised mobile operators that have failed to comply with these Codes of Practice, with financial penalties ranging from $300,000 to $400,000, in relation to mobile network outages.

In the light of these existing regulatory measures and taking into consideration Singapore's fully liberalised telecommunication landscape, we have left it to the operators to commercially determine how best to compensate their subscribers for the inconvenience caused by a service disruption. The level of compensation is a commercial decision by operators for the purpose of retaining their customers' loyalty, which may be too subjective for IDA, as a regulator, to determine. For example, in the case of M1's service disruption in May 2011, IDA understands that M1 had proactively and voluntarily offered free local calls, SMSes, and MMSes for a full day on 25 May to all its subscribers, including those unaffected by the service disruption.

MICA and IDA would continue to monitor the service performances of the telecommunication mobile operators and review both the Resiliency Code and the QoS framework to ensure that they remain relevant in our liberalised telecommunications market.

Page: 432