Xfinity Internet Outages Impact Charleston Area Customers | Business

Thousands of Xfinity Internet customers in Charleston and beyond were without service on the evening of October 1st.

The outage came just as the MLB playoffs began and the vice presidential candidates were set to face off in their only nationally televised debate.

According to a local outage map on the Xfinity website, more than 4,000 downtown Charleston residents were without service, along with thousands more in James Island, Mount Pleasant, North Charleston and West Ashley.

Network damage is cited as the main reason for most outages.

“Customers in the greater Charleston area experienced outages last night due to a fiber outage in the area,” said Xfinity spokeswoman Amanda Verdin. “Comcast teams worked diligently overnight to get customers back online and services should be restored as of this morning. We thank the community for their patience.”

The fiber optic outage occurred on a line from Augusta, Georgia, to Charleston “while a non-Comcast crew was pulling debris away during storm recovery,” Verdin said.

The outage map on the Xfinity website around noon Oct. 2 showed thousands of customers without service in Charleston, including the same locations that were confirmed to be affected Tuesday evening.

Xfinity told some local customers that their service would be restored at 4:50 a.m. Oct. 2. Subsequent messages included earlier and later times.

According to downdetector.com, nationwide user reports of problems with Xfinity service increased starting around 5:10 p.m. on October 1st. These reports increase shortly after 8 p.m. before falling again.

In addition to Charleston, major outages were reported in cities from Miami to Chicago, Detroit, New York and Boston, as well as on the West Coast in San Francisco and Seattle, according to downdetector.com. Outages were first reported on the West Coast on Monday morning, NBC Bay Area reported.

Xfinity News on social media did not mention any issues outside of areas hard hit by Hurricane Helene.

Verdin said the outages in Charleston were unrelated to other incidents.