Comcast Corp. has confirmed a partial national outage for Xfinity subscribers with its new X1 set-top boxes and delays for people attempting to contact its customer-service call centers.
There are five million X1 set-top boxes installed in homes across the United States, though the cable-TV giant says the technical problems - now several days old - has not affected all of them.
About noon Thursday, the website Downdetector.com indicated outages in the Philadelphia and New York areas, and in California and Colorado.
More than 7,000 comments have been filed on the website related to the Comcast outage.
"X-1 still down," one comment said Thursday. "Nothing seems to fix it. I am having it replaced with an older box in a week."
A woman from Port Charlotte, Fla., said, "Hope the company is planning on compensation for 1/3 of the US customers being without any TV for a few days!"
A Comcast spokeswoman said Thursday, "We know some of our customers may have missed their favorite shows off and on over the past few days and were unable to easily reach our customer-care representatives for assistance, and we're really sorry."
The technical glitch erupted as the company was upgrading the X1 platform with new services and features, the company said.
"We've identified the cause, and our engineers are working to fully restore our services. Additionally, we will be reaching out to impacted customers to ensure their service issues have been resolved and they are satisfied with their service," the spokeswoman added.
Comcast executives say X1 is the cable industry's leading technology and central to its plan to modernize its telecommunications network.
Teri Simon, an Xfinity subscriber from Lower Merion, said she doesn't know whether she has an X1 set-top box but she's been without Internet since Tuesday night.
"Comcast needs better crisis management," Simon. "You can't get anybody to say anything."
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Multistate Comcast outage darkens TV screens for Xfinity subscribers