Comcast Xfinity outage: Businesses across U.S. lose phone service

Comcast's Xfinity phone service suffered a massive outage on Wednesday, taking out landlines for many companies across the U.S.

The trouble began in the morning, and by the afternoon businesses around the nation were reporting interrupted service. California, Florida, states in the Pacific Northwest and parts of Connecticut, New Jersey and New York experienced the most severe disruptions, according to DownDetector.com.

Comcast said that service had mostly been restored as of late Wednesday afternoon, but noted that "customers may still be experiencing an issue with their voice serve."

Hundreds of customers also took to social media to gripe about the downed service, with some business indicating they were using cell phones or alternative means to route calls. 

The outage also affected emergency service calls in the state of Washington, where the Spokane County police department urged residents to use their cell phones rather than landlines if they needed to call 911. The issue has since been resolved.

Comcast "experienced a service interruption today with our Comcast Business Voice and VoiceEdge Select services and we apologize," the company said in an emailed statement. "Services have been restored for most of our customers. We recognize that some customers are still impacted and we expect the issue to be fully resolved shortly."