Nationwide Comcast outage is here to ruin your Friday

We hope you weren't planning to start your pre-Independence Day weekend with a streaming video marathon... you might have to put it on hold. Comcast has confirmed a nationwide outage affecting internet access, TV and voice. While it wasn't specific about which areas were affected, the worst-hit regions appeared to involve the Atlanta area, large portions of Florida and parts of the northeast (including Boston and Philadelphia). San Francisco and Seattle are also running into trouble.

It's not certain what caused the outage, or when regular service will resume. We've asked Comcast for comment. The timing is certainly lousy, though, and not just because it might put a damper on your weekend. It comes just months after a configuration error knocked out service in large swaths of the US -- it's not what you'd call a sterling recommendation for the telecoms giant, especially in light of its attempted bid for Fox.

Update, 5:30PM ET: It looks like Comcast has almost resolved the outage. They've send us the following statement, which notes that service is in the process of being restored: "We identified two, separate and unrelated fiber cuts to our network backbone providers. Our engineers worked to address the issue immediately and services are now being restored to business and residential internet, video and voice customers. We again apologize to anyone who was impacted."