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Gov. Andrew Cuomo

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo said in a statement just released that the early-morning Time Warner Internet outage is a stark reminder of how important the Internet is in people's daily lives and a reason to scrutinize the potential merger between Time Warner and Comcast.

The outage, which reportedly affected all 11.4 million Time Warner customers nationwide, occurred around 4:30 a.m. during "routine network maintenance" according to the cable giant. Services were restored by 6 a.m. to the majority of Time Warner customers, although there were pockets of outages for hours later.

Cuomo's full statement follows:

Today's widespread internet outage that has apparently impacted more than 11 million customers at Time Warner – which is based in New York – is a stark reminder that our economy is increasingly dependent on a reliable broadband network. That is one of the reasons why I pushed for a stronger standard of review for cable company mergers earlier this year.

I have directed the New York State Department of Public Service to investigate this outage as part of its review of Comcast's proposed merger with Time Warner. The Department will also review whether the outage affected Time Warner's provision of telephone service in any way. In addition, the Department will include its analysis of this event in its ongoing study of the telecom industry, which is exploring potential changes to the regulatory landscape pertaining to telephone, internet and cable.

Dependable internet service is a vital link in our daily lives and telecommunications companies have a responsibility to deliver reliable service to their customers.

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