Bright House Networks Says Service Restored Following Outage

Bright House Networks says it has completely restored all of its phone, high-speed Internet and cable service after a software bug caused an outage across the Tampa Bay region Tuesday.

The outage began around 10:40 a.m. Tuesday and caused an interruption in services across the area until about 5 p.m., the company said.

"The incident continued with a cascading affect across areas of the market," Bright House spokesman Joe Durkin said in a statement.
Bright House engineers worked with vendors to identify and correct the problem, the company said. "They were able to locate the cause as a software bug that triggered the event to begin and expand in scope," Durkin said.

Service was reported down in much of the area, including Hillsborough, Pinellas, Pasco and Manatee counties. On Twitter, there were dozens of tweets Tuesday by customers reporting outages.

The Pinellas County Sheriff's Office phone lines were down during the outage. Bright House's customer service and public relations phone lines were also down.

In Manatee County, several customers drove to the local Bright House Networks office to get updates because they could not reach anyone by phone.

How long were you without phone, cable or Internet on Tuesday? Are you still experiencing problems? Let us know in the comments below.