Crushed Cable Sidelines Comcast Calif. Subs

Some 35,000 Comcast Corp. subscribers in parts of Palo Alto, Sunnyvale and Cupertino, Calif., lost service Tuesday afternoon when a contractor accidentally crushed underground cabling, the Mercury News reported.

A Comcast spokesman told the newspaper workers from a contractor crushed two 15-inch pipes that housed fiber-optic cables. The outage affected both TV and cable-modem service.

The accident occurred at about 2 p.m. PST. Cable-modem service was back up at about 4:45 p.m., and TV service soon after, the Mercury News said.