NEW YORK (CNNMoney) — Time Warner Cable, one of the nation’s largest cable and broadband providers, suffered an unusual nationwide Internet outage early Wednesday morning, sparking new complaints about the company’s service.
Time Warner Cable said the outage occurred at 4:30 a.m. ET “during our routine network maintenance.”
“An issue with our Internet backbone created disruption with our Internet and On Demand services,” the company said in a statement.
“As of 6 a.m. ET, services were largely restored as updates continue to bring all customers back online,” the company added.
Some Time Warner Cable customers said in tweets that their Internet service was still spotty after 7 a.m., though it had resumed working for others, including this reporter, who’s filing his story via the provider’s Internet connection.
The outage is another black eye for Time Warner Cable, which has a dismal reputation among consumers.
Earlier this year, the American Consumer Satisfaction Index showed Time Warner Cable had the lowest satisfaction rate of any big television provider.
Comcast, the company with the second-lowest satisfaction rate in that survey, is in the process of acquiring Time Warner Cable.
Both companies have made big investments to improve customer service and the quality of their products — but of course none of that matters when customers wake up and find out the Internet is not working.
Time Warner Cable serves about 14.5 million homes, most of which subscribe to cable and broadband Internet.
Many of those homes are in big metropolitan areas like New York City and Los Angeles. That made Wednesday’s outage more noticeable, because it affected journalists and the people who employ them.
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