Comcast is beginning to restore internet, cable, and phone services across the country after a nationwide outage cut millions of customers off its internet, cable, and telephone services.
The telecommunications company said on Twitter that the disruption was caused by two cuts it spotted on the fiber lines of CenturyLink and Zayo Group, which provide the backbone to Comcast's network.
Down Detector, which monitors issues with all types of services in real time, reports that the outage affected more than 11,000 customers on Friday, though the official number of affected customers remains unclear. The service notes that outage reports mostly come from Mountain View, Chicago, Philadelphia, San Francisco, Washington, Seattle, Arlington, Atlanta, Pittsburgh, and New York.
This is not the first time that Comcast suffered from an outage: it was downed by a route leak across the country, from California in the west to New York in the east, last November. Nonetheless, it is one of the largest and most widespread service disruptions in Comcast's history, highlighting one of the internet's weak spots.
Comcast Corp., the second-largest U.S. pay-TV provider, said it was restoring service to video, phone and internet customers following a nationwide interruption.
The Philadelphia-based company said two separate, unrelated fiber cuts at backbone providers halted service to business and residential customers. The company announced the outage on Twitter, saying the failure was nationwide.
“Our engineers worked to address the issue immediately and services are now being restored to business and residential internet, video and voice customers,” the company said late Friday in a statement. “We again apologize to anyone who was impacted.”
Comcast sells TV, phone and internet service in major cities including Houston, Philadelphia and Chicago. It has about 22.3 million cable TV subscribers and more than 26 million high-speed internet customers. The company is also a major force in media, as owner of Universal Pictures and TV networks including NBC and USA.
The shares gained 0.6 percent to $32.81 at the close in New York. Before Friday they were down 19 percent this year. The company is vying with Walt Disney Co. to buy much of 21st Century Fox Inc.
https://www.neowin.net/news/comcast-outage-hits-millions-of-customers-nationwide-services-now-being-restored
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-06-29/comcast-says-cable-service-suffers-nationwide-interruption