Staying at home is probably the safest way to prevent yourself from being infected with the coronavirus. After all, the only other people you see are the characters from Netflix.
So if you’ve been staying at home, you should be safe—
2 NetLink Workers Had Visited 34 Homes to Do Fibre Installation Works Tested Positive for COVID-19
Oh man.
According to NetLink Trust, the builder of the fibre network infrastructure in Singapore, four employees of a contractor that they’ve engaged have been tested positive for COVID-19.
And two of them have been to 34 homes to do fibre installation works between 1 April 2020 to 14 April 2020.
That’s before and during the Circuit Breaker period.
The other two workers who were tested positive were not involved in work that requires home or office visit.
On the bright side, “None of these workers had been in contact with NetLink staff within the last 14 days.”
The workers were tested positive between 14 to 16 April.
NetLink is now working with the contractor to “assist MOH in its contact tracing efforts to contact all parties that the affected workers may have come into contact with.”
According to them, they and their contractors have implemented precautionary measures in line with MOH and MOM guidelines since end-January 2020.
Once they learned of this, they immediately informed IMDA, and as an additional safeguard to protect the public, IMDA has told them to temporarily suspended all works that require visits to homes or offices.
So if your Internet is down and it’s due to the fibre cable…then GG.
They will be contacting affected parties with current service orders to inform them of the suspension. This temporary suspension will be lifted after a review of the existing precautionary measures and appropriate enhancements are implemented.
But what is this NetLink thingy?
Most Houses Have It Installed Le
You might be confused—aren’t the ISPs responsible for installing fibre connection?
Well, yes and no.
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To put it simply, if you’re old enough to remember SARS, you’d be old enough to remember that those Internet points in your house didn’t just appear out of nowhere on your wall.
Back then, we used our telephone line for 56k Internet connection for 36 hours of Internet monthly, then our TV line for cable broadband connection.
Soon, we all shifted to fibre connection, but old houses won’t have fibre connection, so once upon a time, many of those contractors went to various houses to fix the fibre line in each household.
New buildings (usually when their Temporary Occupation Permit (TOP) is after 2016) would have the “fibre line” installed by default.
So for those 34 homes, either they’ve die-die refused to install the fibre connection in the past or their Termination Point (the official and correct name of the fibre line) needs repair.
As for your ISP, they’re usually just there to set up the point and very often, help you to set up your router.
And in case you’re wondering, no, cable broadband connection has been completely discontinued since June 2019.