SINGAPORE: Issues of inaccurate bus timings and long wait times being displayed at bus stops and on transport apps on Saturday (Apr 18) were due to damaged fibre network cables that disrupted telco services, said the Land Transport Authority (LTA).
“On Apr 18, 2026, at around 10.40am, fibre service cables were damaged during contiguous bored pile works for the North–South Corridor project,” said LTA in response to CNA’s query.
“The damage resulted in disruptions to the telco services. Preliminary investigations showed that this affected the bus Expected Time of Arrival (ETA) system which uses the affected fibre service cables.”
Construction activity had earlier on Saturday damaged fibre infrastructure, leading to an outage which affected broadband services for around 5,000 users in Ang Mo Kio, Bishan, Sengkang and Punggol.
NetLink Trust, which owns and operates the fibre network infrastructure of Singapore’s Nationwide Broadband Network, said on Saturday that it experienced a fibre service outage.
According to preliminary findings from the Infocomm Media Development Authority (IMDA), a cable cut during construction works led to the disruption.
LTA said in a Facebook post at about 4.30pm that it was investigating “technical issues” that were affecting the ETA system for buses, causing inaccurate bus timings to be displayed.
Bus operations were not affected, and all services continued to operate at their usual frequencies, it said.
“This is not related to previous incidents,” the authority told CNA on Saturday evening.
“We are working closely with Singtel and NetLink Trust to assess the damage and implement repairs to the fibre service cables, as well as related services like the ETA system.”