Bright House Networks Outages Reported in Tampa Bay Area

An apparent Bright House Networks outage left much of the Tampa Bay area without phone, Internet or cable service Tuesday afternoon.

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

Bright House Networks could not immediately be reached for comment Tuesday. Its customer service and public relations lines were down.

The company was aware of the issues and had engineers working on it, spokesman Joe Durkin told the St. Peteresburg Times. Durkin said it was unclear how widespread the outages were. The company's customer service and public relations lines were down.

And while the Internet was down, that did not seem to stop disgruntled users from tweeting.

Here are some comments from Clearwater area Bright House Networks users on Twitter:

"Why use cell to call 911? Because Pinellas Sheriff says their own phones are down in #Brighthouse outage: http://t.co/cKU7lDf," @DailyDeadline at 9/6/11 2:34 p.m.

"Trying to make the most of this #Brighthouse failure. Going for a run while there's a break in the storms. At least my cell and iPod work!" tweeted @sarahseessports.

"#Brighthouse cable & Internet out in Largo (central Pinellas) going on an hour. Need to work, damnit!" tweeted @gobecky.

"First tweets about #brighthouse down were at 11:19. FYI," @gordonhelser tweeted at 12:43 p.m.

"Thank you @starbucks and #at&t for being up when #brighthouse is down so I can get some work done today! #grateful," tweeted @sleepygirl at 12:55 p.m.

Some Clearwater Patch Facebook friends are using cell phones and Blackberry devices to reach the Internet.

Stay with Clearwater Patch for the latest developments on this story.

Is your cable, phone or Internet service out? Post in the comments below.