LOWER MANHATTAN — Many lower Manhattan residents were without cable or internet Thursday morning thanks to a Time Warner Cable outage.
"Customers in Lower Manhattan #NYC, you may be experiencing service issues," the company tweeted at about 8:30 a.m. Thursday. "We are aware and working to resolve. Thanks for your patience."
A Time Warner spokesman said that an underground fire in Little Italy sparked by unrelated equipment in the area burned Time Warner fiber cables also located there.
Crews are currently working to install new cables, and the company expects to have all the 20,000 customers affected by the outage back online by early evening Thursday.
Several customers voiced frustration with the outage on Twitter.
"What's up @timewarner?!" Genevieve Ascencio tweeted Thursday morning.
"Cable AND internet is out in the 10002. Really screwing w my routine. Need #NY1 to get my day started."
Others suggested their own solutions.
"Time warner, how about you pay for the coffee I have to buy today so I can work where there's actually an internet connection?" Jason DeRoner tweeted.
Many of the customers who were without internet said they lived on the Lower East Side or in the East Village, while at least one Time Warner Cable customer in TriBeCa said he had not noticed any problems.
Several people said their cable and internet had been down since Wednesday evening.
