Accidental fiber cuts caused by construction workers took out telecommunications service for more than 750,000 customers in the New York City area yesterday.

The fiber cuts hit the network of Level 3, an Internet backbone provider, and lasted for hours before being fixed. Problems hit several states: customer reports on DownDetector indicate that outages primarily affected Time Warner Cable (TWC) in New York and Cox Communications in large parts of Connecticut and Rhode Island and small parts of Massachusetts. Level 3's network serves both TWC and Cox.

The most specific outage numbers came from New York. The New York Department of Public Service (NYDPS) issued a statement saying that "more than 750,000 customers in the New York City area were unable to complete telephone calls." Most or all of those customers are apparently Time Warner Cable users. Internet and TV service was also affected.

Level 3 confirmed the outage, telling CNN and other media outlets, "Our network is experiencing service disruptions affecting some of our customers with operations in the Northeastern United States due to a fiber cut caused by third-party construction. Our technicians are on site and working to restore service." Time Warner Cable said the outage was caused by "multiple fiber cuts at one of our network providers."

The NYDPS statement noted that Level 3 provides service to both TWC and Verizon in New York. But Verizon's network did not suffer any problems related to the Level 3 trouble yesterday, a Verizon spokesperson told Ars.

Time Warner Cable acknowledged the outage on Twitter at 3:22pm ET yesterday and said at 9:48pm that service had been restored to NYC customers.

NYC customers, we are aware of issues concerning all services. Techs are investigating. Services will be restored as soon as possible. ^MR — TWC Help (@TWC_Help) May 9, 2016

@GranbyPharmacy It may be another couple of hours, I'm afraid. Crews are splicing fiber now. I'm so sorry! I'll update you, if I can.-Becky — Cox Customer Care (@CoxHelp) May 9, 2016

Cox's customer service team on Twitter "was responding to questions about outages across Connecticut and Rhode Island all afternoon," Fox61 in Hartford noted yesterday. Cox said that service was restored late last night.