A software glitch in its new equipment has cost SingTel a hefty S$400,000, after it was fined today by the infocomm regulator for disruptions in its 3G services in various parts of Singapore last year.

The Infocomm Development Authority (IDA) today meted out its heaviest fine yet to a telecom operator here, citing the seriousness of SingTel’s downtime, which affected thousands of users in the central region of the island. More than 5 per cent of SingTel’s base stations were affected. …

SingTel says it is restoring connections to its 3G services this evening, after a “software glitch” made it difficult for many users to make calls, send SMSes and surf the Web on their phones today.

The Singapore telecom operator posted on its Facebook page, an hour ago, that the issues were intermittent and services were being turned back on progressively. It said:

Hi everyone. The cause of the intermittent issues faced by some of our 3G customers has been traced to a software glitch. Our engineers are restoring services progressively this evening. Again, we apologise for the inconvenience and thank you for your patience.

Throughout the day, many SingTel users had taken to Facebook and Twitter to complain about being unable to log on to the network, and receiving only weak or unstable signals. According to one report by ZDNetAsia, the disruption for some users has been ongoing for two days. …