When best practices aren't good enough

THE fire at SingTel's Bukit Panjang exchange might have been extinguished within 20 minutes last week, but the questions raised by this incident linger for a while.

Last Wednesday, a fire - the cause of which has not been revealed - started inside a cable vault containing 343 fibre optic cables. 149 of them were damaged by the fire, and service disruptions to residences and businesses followed.

While services to businesses were restored by the following day, pockets of residences arou…