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 in a statement. The incident "had a cascading effect across areas of the market," Bright House spokesman Joe Durkin said. 

Durkin did not have an answer for customers wondering if their bills would be discounted because of the lost service.

"We haven't even thought about that yet," Durkin said. "Our priority was restoring services."

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 hundreds of tweets Tuesday by customers reporting outages.

With more than a million Bright House customers across Tampa Bay, almost everyone was affected to some degree or another by the outage, Durkin said, but "not everyone lost everything."

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.

A steady stream of customers came into the parking lot, some carrying their equipment, which they thought was at fault. Bright House workers greeted them before they even got through the doors.

"I drove down to Bright House because I couldn't get through on their phones," said John Stevens, who lives in Bradenton. "I pulled in the parking lot and saw all of the peple out there and I knew there was a problem."

Bob Eberling was so frustrated after calling Bright House and getting a non-informative message that simply said his he call can't get through, he came to the office armed with a suggestion.

Why not program in a helpful message one that said all services are down and Bright House is working to resolve the issue, Eberling said.

Manatee County government lost its Internet services for a short time Tuesday, said spokesman Nicholas Azzara. The county's technology department was able to work around the issues by putting the county on a secondary Internet connection. All critical services were immediately re-routed so they didn't experience problems, but some of the county's phone services were up and down, according to workers answering the phones.

The Manatee County Sheriff's Office lost internet and phone service at the district 3 station in Ellenton, Azarra said, so it went to radio communication. Two county libraries were also affected.

The City of Bradenton was also without internet service for a little more than an hour today, sid spokesman Tim McCann. The city's phones were not affected, he added.