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Comcast says cut fibers triggered nationwide outage and may impact other providers


Comcast customers across the United States were slowly coming back online late Friday afternoon after a massive outage left them without internet, cable TV, and telephone service.

The outage started Friday morning and quickly spread to several cities, including New York, Philadelphia, Atlanta, San Francisco, Denver and Chicago, according to Downdetector.com, a site that monitors service outages. Complaints peaked early in the day, but Comcast (CCZ) service problems continued popping up well into the afternoon. In some cases the outage last most of the afternoon, but Comcast said in a tweet Friday evening that it had started restoring service.

The company was trying to determine just what went wrong, but said in a statement that "one of Comcast's large backbone network partners had a fiber cut that we believe is also impacting other providers."

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The company could not say how many people were affected by outage, which it called "nationwide."

Fiber optic cables are used for long distance high-speed data transmission.

One of Comcast's large backbone network partners had a fiber cut that we believe is also impacting other providers. It is currently affecting our business and residential internet, video and voice customers. We apologize & are working to get services restored as soon as possible — ComcastCares (@comcastcares) June 29, 2018

Customers took to their cellphones and mobile devices to complain vociferously on Twitter. Some reported difficulty getting through to Comcast customer service. The company took to Twitter to provide updates and urged customers not to call 911.


The internet and phone provider Comcast has confirmed it has suffered a huge service outage – with reports of problems stretching from coast to coast.

The Philadelphia-based company, said to be the the second largest broadcasting and cable television firm in the world, told users it was working to restore service as soon as possible.

“Hello, we apologise for the inconvenience,” it said to one customer asking for information. “Use this link to send a DM to our Digital Care Team for assistance.”

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She was shot near Khan Yunis in the south of the territory, health ministry spokesman Ashraf al-Qudra said, bringing the toll of Gazans killed by Israeli fire since the end of March to 123. AFP/Getty 30/50 1 June 2018 Spain's new Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez poses after a vote on a no-confidence motion at the Spanish Parliament in Madrid. Spain's parliament ousted Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy in a no-confidence vote sparked by fury over his party's corruption woes, with his Socialist arch-rival Pedro Sanchez automatically taking over. AFP/Getty 31/50 31 May 2018 Zinedine Zidane looks on after a press conference to announce his resignation as manager from Real Madrid. He confirmed he was leaving the Spanish giants, just days after winning the Champions League for the third year in a row. AFP/Getty 32/50 30 May 2018 A worker cleans up the Millenaire migrants makeshift camp along the Canal de Saint-Denis near Porte de la Villette, northern Paris, following its evacuation on May 30. More than a thousand migrants and refugees were evacuated early in the morning from the camp that had been set up for several weeks along the Canal. AFP/Getty 33/50 29 May 2018 Police and ambulances are seen at the site where a gunman shot dead three people, two of them policemen, before being killed by elite officers, in the eastern Belgian city of Liege. AFP/Getty 34/50 28 May 2018 French President Emmanuel Macron meets with Mamoudou Gassama, 22, from Mali, at the presidential Elysee Palace in Paris. Gassama living illegally in France is being honored by Macron for scaling an apartment building over the weekend to save a 4-year-old child dangling from a fifth-floor balcony. AP 35/50 27 May 2018 Migrants wait to disembark from the ship Aquarius in the Sicilian harbour of Catania, Italy Reuters 36/50 26 May 2018 Ireland awaits the official result of a referendum that could end the country’s ban on abortion. 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ANI via Reuters 40/50 22 May 2018 People demonstrate in Paris during a nationwide day protest by French public sector employees and public servants against the overhauls proposed by French President Emmanuel Macron, calling them an "attack" by the centrist leader against civil services as well as their economic security. AFP/Getty 41/50 21 May 2018 Newly appointed Catalan president Quim Torra arrives to visit jailed Catalan separatist politicians at the Estremera jail near Madrid. AFP/Getty 42/50 20 May 2018 Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro casts his vote during the presidential elections in Caracas. Maduro was seeking a second term in power. AFP/Getty 43/50 19 May 2018 Channelized lava emerges on Kilauea Volcano's lower East Rift Zone on Hawaii. The USGS said on its website that "a fast-moving pahoehoe lava flow that emerged from fissure 20... continues to flow southeast," with the quickest of three "lobes" progressing at 230 yards (210 meters) per hour. AFP/US Geological Survey 44/50 18 May 2018 Santa Fe High School student Dakota Shrader is comforted by her mother Susan Davidson following a shooting at the school in Texas. Shrader said her friend was shot in the incident. Multiple people have been killed. Stuart Villanueva/The Galveston County Daily News via AP 45/50 17 May 2018 French President Emmanuel Macron, British Prime Minister Theresa May and German Chancellor Angela Merkel meeting during the EU-Western Balkans Summit in Sofia, Bulgaria. Reuters 46/50 16 May 2018 People hold flags with the state coat of arms of Russia as they drive along a bridge, which was constructed to connect the Russian mainland with the Crimean Peninsula across the Kerch Strait. Reuters 47/50 15 May 2018 Palestinians run away from tear gas shot at them by Israeli forces during a protest in Ramallah, in the occupied West Bank AFP/Getty 48/50 14 May 2018 A Palestinian demonstrator runs during a protest against the US embassy move to Jerusalem and ahead of the 70th anniversary of the Nakba at the Israel-Gaza border. REUTERS 49/50 13 May 2018 A bullet hole on the window of a cafe in Paris, the day after a knifeman killed one man and wounded four other people before being shot dead by police AFP/Getty 50/50 12 May 2018 Germany's Chancellor Angela Merkel looks on after receiving the 'Lamp of Peace, the "Nobel" Catholic award for "her work of conciliation for the peaceful cohabitation of peoples" at The Basilica Superiore of St Francis of Assisi in Italy. AFP/Getty

Reports suggest the outage is primarily affecting the company’s cable service, but telephone and internet services were apparently also affected in some areas.

The company did not immediately respond to enquiries after the breakout at 2pm EST on Friday

Comcast, which was founded in 1963, is said to have 23.3 million internet subscribers and 11.5m phone customers.

The company later said the interruption of its internet, video and voice services, was related to a cut fibre at one of the company’s partners.

“One of Comcast’s large backbone network partners had a fibre cut that we believe is also impacting other providers,” it said in a statement.

“It is currently affecting our business and residential internet, video and voice customers.

“We apologise and are working to get services restored as soon as possible.”

There was no immediate information on how soon the company expected services to be restored.


Comcast said Friday that the hours-long interruption of its internet, video and voice services, was caused two separate and unrelated fiber cuts to the company's large network providers. The company is working to restore services.

“We identified two, separate and unrelated fiber cuts to our network backbone providers. Our engineers worked to address the issue immediately and services are now being restored to business and residential internet, video and voice customers. We again apologize to anyone who was impacted.”

The company did not specify which providers were impacted.

A source told CNBC that one of the cuts occurred in CenturyLink's network.

CenturyLink said its network is operating normally, but said there were fiber cuts in its network Friday.

“While the CenturyLink network continues to operate normally, on June 29, we experienced two isolated fiber cuts in North Carolina affecting some customers that by themselves did not cause the issues experienced by other providers. At this time, our technicians are working to restore the services,” the company said in a statement.

Comcast reported last quarter it serves 29.6 million total business and residential customers. It is the second largest U.S. pay TV provider, behind AT&T, since its DirecTV acquisition,.

Disclosure: Comcast is the owner of NBCUniversal, parent company of CNBC and CNBC.com.


Photo: Joe Raedle (Getty)

If you’re a Comcast customer, you might have already realized your internet is borked today. That wave of sadness and despair you’re presumably experiencing seems to be the result of a few cut fiber cables, according to a tweet from Comcast. If it makes you feel any better, the company says it’s trying to fix it.

Earlier today, various internet services seemingly went down, reflected in a spike of outage reports on sites like Down Detector. A tweet from Newsday reporter Joan Gralla stated the source of the disruption was actually a series of fiber line cuts, one cut between New York and Chicago, the other between Ashburn and South Carolina.

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The issue also seems to have shut down Comcast’s Xfinity Service Status page.

Comcast confirmed the severed fiber in a tweet, stating that one of its “large backbone network partners had a fiber cut that we believe is also impacting other providers. It is currently affecting our business and residential internet, video and voice customers. We apologize & are working to get services restored as soon as possible.”

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Gizmodo has reached out to Comcast to learn more about how, exactly, one goes about crippling Internet connectivity throughout the country, and will update this story accordingly. Until then, enjoy the sunshine before we fuck that up, too.

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