Jan. 12—Comcast officials reassured Colorado Springs residents on Thursday that their network is secure after tens of thousands of customers across the city lost services for more than 12 hours Wednesday following vandalism to the Comcast fiber line west of Memorial Park.

"Comcast has thousands of employees in Colorado and thousands more nationwide focused on keeping the network secure, fast and reliable. Our team of security experts uses sophisticated technology and intelligence to monitor our network 24/7," said Leslie Oliver, a spokeswoman for Comcast's Mountain West region.

"Comcast sincerely apologizes for this service disruption," she said.

About 21,000 residential and business internet subscribers lost Comcast services early Wednesday morning, Oliver said, primarily in the areas west of downtown and Interstate 25, including Manitou Springs, Garden of the Gods and south toward the Broadmoor area.

Outage reports stretched from Fountain to Manitou, with Manitou Springs District 14 canceling classes due to internet and phone outages.

Repair teams had service fully restored by 7 p.m. Wednesday.

Video footage shared by Gazette news partner KKTV showed at least one person using a tool to cut existing fiber line in an alleyway between Colorado Avenue and East Cucharras Street near downtown.

The cuts damaged several cables, Oliver said, each of which contains a multitude of thin fiber strands that connect customers to the internet.

"Repairing cable cuts is time-consuming work as it requires several steps including locating all of the cables that contain the fiber, cleaning out each damaged cable and individual fiber, polishing and cleaning each fiber again before ... (fusing) the individual fiber strands back together," Oliver said. "Once this precision work is done, then the fiber needs to be replaced into its protective coat and cable, and then repositioned back into the holding case."

The time it takes to repair damaged lines depends on several factors, such as the location of the damage and the scope of damage done to the line, Oliver said, regardless of whether it is fiber or coaxial, a type of copper cable.

Oliver said Comcast security teams "are working closely" with Colorado Springs police to investigate the vandalism.

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In August, Comcast announced it was expanding and upgrading its local network to provide "multi-gigabit" download and upload speeds. The upgrades will also transform the company's existing local "fiber-rich" infrastructure into a "virtualized cloud-based network, which includes a robust security team that will be supported across the network," Oliver said.

"With this network evolution our Comcast engineers can reliably and in real time identify, troubleshoot and resolve problems faster," she said.

The push for fiber optic services in Colorado Springs gained traction over the last year or so, with providers Underline Infrastructure, MetroNet and Colorado Springs Utilities announcing plans to build fiber optic networks across the city to provide high-speed internet.

Like Comcast, Lumen Technologies' CenturyLink unit, another local provider, is expanding and upgrading its local networks to provide high-speed internet services.

Colorado Springs Utilities spokesman Steve Berry said Thursday the utility's future fiber optic customers will not need to worry about the reliability of service because of robust security measures it is taking as it builds the system infrastructure.

The utility is building the 2,000-mile-long fiber network to serve its own internal needs but also said it will serve every neighborhood in town through a contract with Ting, an internet services provider that has signed a 25-year contract to lease the fiber.

"We can't say 100% that we would not have an incident like this," Berry said, referring to the Comcast outage. "But we have an in-house cybersecurity staff who are well-equipped and are walking step-by-step with project managers."

Because Utilities also provides electric, natural gas, water and wastewater services for more than 600,000 customers across the Pikes Peak region, "we have no choice but to be up to speed to the ... threats that we may face," Berry said. "The security of this network is a priority."

Residents can also report suspicious activity to their internet or phone service providers, Berry said.

"Sometimes it also takes our customers to be our eyes and ears," he said. "I think it's a good example of of why it's so important to be diligent and observing of behavior that may not look right. Don't hesitate to let us know," he said.