Netizens lambaste “insensitive” M1 for posting Facebook ad instead of updating customers affected by internet outage

Several netizens have lambasted and demanded compensation from M1, especially after the Internet provider posted an “insensitive” advertisement for the latest Cirque du Soleil show it is sponsoring, instead of providing an update on the fibre broadband outage to anxious customers.

Thousands of M1 customers appear to have been affected in this morning’s fibre broadband disruption. The service disruption today (22 May) is the second such incident in the past two days, after a fibre cable outage involving fibre operator Netlink Trust occurred yesterday (21 May).

Several M1 customers took to social media this morning and reported that they had trouble accessing the internet and expressed their frustrations over the latest fibre broadband disruption.

Downdetector.sg, a local website that provides a realtime overview of technology outages, suggested that over 7,000 complaints were filed due to the disruption, in a graph of M1 Singapore problems in the last 24 hours:

At 9am, M1 reported the disruption on its Facebook page and said: “Customers may experience difficulties in accessing fibre services in some areas in the northern and eastern parts of Singapore. Our engineers are working hard to resolve the issue. We apologise for the inconvenience and will provide updates as soon as possible.”

While M1 said that the disruption affected customers in the northern and eastern parts of Singapore, customers from the Western part of Singapore, including Jurong, Bukit Batok, Bukit Panjang, Clementi and Queenstown, have also reported identical issues.

In a second update, published on 11.19am, M1 said: “Our engineers are still resolving the fibre service issue and we will provide more information as soon as possible. Thank you for your patience.”

M1’s last update on the matter was published on 3.12pm. The telecommunications company said: “Progressive fibre service restoration is currently underway. Some affected customers already have their services restored. Our engineers are working to restore the remaining affected services.”

Netizens, however, grew upset when M1 chose to air a promotional feature for the Cirque du Soleil KURIOS show it is sponsoring before giving customers the final update.

The video has received 52 reactions on Facebook and about 40 of these reactions are the angry emoticon. Angry customer blasted the company, complaining that their mobile data charges are going up due to the fibre broadband outage, and demanded compensation: