Comcast telephone customers in Clark, Cowlitz and 14 other Washington counties had problems Friday making calls to 911 or to anyone else, due to issues at a Comcast switching facility in Chicago.
Clark Regional Emergency Services Agency announced that Clark County 911 systems functioned properly for other telephone customers, both landline and wireless.
The Comcast outage began at about 4:30 p.m. Friday.
Beth Hester, a spokeswoman for Comcast, said the problem appeared to affect inbound phone calls.
She described problem as “sporadic and intermittent” for Comcast customers in California, Utah, Colorado, Oregon and Washington. The actual number of affected customers was unclear as of Friday evening.
“Some people might have service; some people might not,” she said.
Hester said the problem originated with a redundancy switch in Chicago that is supposed to move call traffic over to a new circuit if and when something goes wrong with the first circuit.
“If that fails, you end up with an outage,” she said.
Hester also said Comcast was working to correct it. Local officials asked Comcast customers to not call 911 to check their phones. Instead, Comcast customers were instructed to use cellphones to call 911 in case of an emergency.
Unlike traditional phone companies, such as CenturyLink, Comcast uses the Internet to carry phone traffic.
