Comcast fixes sporadic disruptions of Internet service

Comcast says a "memory leak" caused the disruption that inconvenienced some of its 7 million high-speed Internet customers nationwide.

The problem occurred sporadically over a roughly weeklong period ending Wednesday, the cable giant said.

Engineers have fixed the problem, which occurred in the software that enables customers to call up Web pages.

Comcast has taken steps to see that it doesn't resurface, spokesman Steve Kipp said yesterday.

"We've experienced no major issues with our Internet service since last Wednesday night," Kipp said.

Comcast engineers say data that normally would be discarded remained in the system. It took up space, or memory, that should have been made available for new Web page transactions, Kipp said.

The problem was intermittent, and some customers were unaffected.

It also affected e-mail for some Comcast customers.

Because of the sporadic nature of the problem, it was impossible to know who was affected, Kipp said.

Customers who want their bills adjusted because of the service problem should contact the company at 877-824-2288.

According to recent reports in the trade press, many Comcast customers posting complaints on BroadbandReports.com and other Web sites were as angry over Comcast's failure to alert customers to the problem as they were over the outages themselves.

"How hard is it just to tell people there's a problem?" wrote one angry customer. "I called in and was put on hold for more than 10 minutes."

Peter Lewis: 206-464-2217 or plewis@seattletimes.com