Comcast Says Nationwide Cable Outage Hitting Millions of Customers

(Bloomberg) -- 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.

To contact the reporter on this story: Gerry Smith in New York at gsmith233@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Nick Turner at nturner7@bloomberg.net, Rob Golum, Andrew Pollack

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