Comcast's network suffers short-lived but major outage in pockets across the United States

What you need to know

• Comcast's home internet and cable networks experienced massive outages across the United States around 1 pm PT / 4pm ET on October 15.
• Down Detector showed a spike in user complaints at the time, though they seem to be dying down.
• We reached out to Comcast for comment; they responded that their team "is not seeing" the issue.

Some Xfinity by Comcast customers experienced severe internet outages across the United States on Tuesday. While not every customer has been affected, we've heard reports of lost or slow internet in many major U.S. hubs.

Downdetector shows a spike in reports in the last hour, with 68% reporting "landline internet" issues. Some Android Central staffers have personally been affected, reporting problems with their home internet and cable TV; others still have internet and only experienced a brief outage earlier in the day. It may vary by location.

Android Central reached out to Comcast asking for comment on the source of the outage and the timetable for when things will be fixed, as no Xfinity social media has commented on the outage.

Update: An Xfinity rep told us that their team is "not seeing" an issue, though it's possible that the widespread issue was resolved before they could see anything.

It appears that things have improved since the initial spike in reports, but we're still seeing reports coming in on Down Detector — simply fewer than before. Some users have told us that their cable has returned but home internet is still down.

While we're grateful that the Xfinity issues didn't last long in most places, we're curious why they cropped up in the first place, and wish we could have gotten more information on the source of the problem. The Down Detector map showed complaints from New York and San Francisco to Seattle and Houston, but other major cities apparently weren't affected.

We also heard of sporadic reports of AT&T Fiber outages on Tuesday.

This outage arrived just a couple of weeks after the major Verizon outage in late September. We wrote at the time that it highlighted the importance of satellite backups in case of cellular issues. In this case, the problem is mostly restricted to home internet.