Image: Consumerist Dot Com/Flickr
Time Warner Cable, the nation's second largest cable company, suffered a nationwide Internet outage Wednesday caused by an "erroneous IP configuration," the company told Motherboard."During an overnight network maintenance activity in which we were managing IP addresses, an erroneous configuration was propagated throughout our national backbone, resulting in a network outage," the company said. "A failure of this size is very serious and we are taking the necessary steps to improve our processes with the objective of making sure this doesn't happen again."Time Warner Cable's breakdown prompted New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo to ask regulators to probe the incident, state officials told Motherboard."Today's widespread internet outage that has apparently impacted more than 11 million customers at Time Warner—which is based in New York—is a stark reminder that our economy is increasingly dependent on a reliable broadband network," Cuomo said in an emailed statement.The outage lasted from roughly 4:30 AM until 7:30 AM. The company said it "immediately identified and corrected the root cause of the issue and restored service by 7:30 AM."The outage prompted Cuomo to expand his ongoing review of Comcast's proposed $45 billion merger with Time Warner Cable."I have directed the New York State Department of Public Service to investigate this outage as part of its review of Comcast's proposed merger with Time Warner," Cuomo said. "The Department will also review whether the outage affected Time Warner's provision of telephone service in any way.""In addition, the Department will include its analysis of this event in its ongoing study of the telecom industry, which is exploring potential changes to the regulatory landscape pertaining to telephone, internet and cable," he continued.Comcast's Time Warner Cable deal drew a frenzied round of last-minute filings this week—both pro and con—ahead of the Federal Communications Commission deadline for public comments on a merger that, if approved, will reshape the US media landscape.
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