Thousands of Spectrum customers in Brooklyn and Queens were impacted by a network outage Thursday caused by vandals, according to the company.
The cable and internet provider took to Twitter Thursday morning to confirm the outage, saying "we are aware of fiber cut caused by vandalism of our network."
Spectrum noted that they appreciate their customers' patience on a holiday marked by popular television events, including the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade.
After more than six hours, the outage was over around 3 p.m.
A spokesperson for the company said Spectrum is offering a $50,000 reward for information leading to the arrest of the person responsible for vandalizing the network.
It's the fourth Spectrum outage in the city attributed to vandals in recent months. In September, service was knocked out for Brooklyn customers, in June, a fiber optic cable serving four major hubs was cut, causing an outage that spread across central Queens and then in July, another widespread outage affected customers.
A Spectrum employee was arrested in the June 26 outage, but charges were later dropped. The employee belonged to the International Brotherhood Electrical Workers Local Union 3, whose members have been on strike since the end of March because they couldn't come to a contract agreement with Charter Communications, the owner of Spectrum. The union has denied any involvement in either of the outages.
(Disclaimer: NBCUniversal is owned by Comcast, a competitor of Charter Spectrum.)
