An electrical fire at Time Warner Cable’s headquarters in El Paso, Texas knocked out cable television, Internet, and telephone services for customers across El Paso Tuesday.

Company officials claimed the fire, which did only minor damage, interrupted service for several hours, but some customers reported phone service and on-demand programming interruptions extending into Wednesday.  Although Time Warner claimed the problem affected only “a few” subscribers, KFOX-TV reported the outage affected the entire city of El Paso.

Ironically, although the company’s customer service center was closed Wednesday, the bill payment office remained open for business.

Service has since been restored across the city.

KFOX-TV, El Paso’s local Fox affiliate, has the most in-depth coverage of Time Warner Cable issues in southwest Texas:

Warning – Loud Audio!

Time Warner Cable will only issue credits for service interruptions to those who specifically request them.  Residents of El Paso can call 1-800-222-5355 to request credit.

KTSM-TV also reported that some Internet customers may have also been affected with extended outages, even after cable television service was restored:

El Paso and Time Warner Cable have had an occasionally contentious history with one another, extending back a year ago when service problems plagued area residents.

Repeated media attention, and the involvement of state and local officials became necessary.  But the ability for the state to deal with poorly performing cable companies is limited — Texas is one of the states that issues statewide cable franchises, tying the hands of local officials.  Additionally, very little state regulation of telecommunications services in Texas means customers often have limited recourse to deal with bad service, beyond simply trying to find an alternative provider, if available.

A history of past troubles can be found in several news video reports below the break.

In November, 2007 local residents were irritated to find negotiations between Time Warner Cable and the NFL cable network unsuccessful.  This has been an issue raised in several cities.  The NFL Network wants placement on basic cable service tiers, not on specialized sports tiers Time Warner Cable usually offers as part of its digital cable lineup.  Since the two companies could not agree on terms, the network remained off of Time Warner Cable’s El Paso lineup.

For sports fans, an irritation.  But of course those who have no interest in sports programming may have been thankful the company decided not to raise everyone’s rates just for one network.

As with all of these reports, KFOX-TV in El Paso covered the controversy in this report from November 23, 2007:

Problems with Time Warner Cable got considerably more serious in early 2008, when service interruptions and poor customer service complaints began to pour into KFOX’s inbox, as well as that of state officials.

Many of the problems involved dead Time Warner Cable digital phone lines.  An inconvenience for some, a matter of life or death to others, as we learn in this report from February 15, 2008:

The Texas Public Utilities Commission was especially concerned with reports of telephone service outages.  Indeed, many residents of El Paso told the station the problems with the cable company were hardly limited to one family, as this report from March 12, 2008 illustrated:

Within hours of airing that report, KFOX got so overwhelmed with additional complaints from upset customers, it produced this “back story” report:

After several weeks of that kind of bad media, Time Warner Cable made efforts to respond to service complaints and try and improve service.  This report from May 19, 2008 updates viewers on the mixed results:

A raw video interview with El Paso’s local Time Warner Director let’s her give the company’s side.  This was from May 21, 2008:

On October 28, 2008, KFOX took another look at how Time Warner Cable was serving residents of El Paso.  It didn’t take them too long to find lots of problems remained.  KFOX skeptically called out Time Warner’s local spokespeople for presenting an image of the company that frankly didn’t meet the reality of actual consumers, much less city officials who were now also forced to get involved:

In February 2009, Time Warner Cable finally admitted they had problems a year ago, according to this report aired February 5th.  The deputy city manager for El Paso updated KFOX on what they were seeing a year after the chorus of complaints began:

http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/KFOX El Paso Update With Time Warner Cable 2-5-09.flv

Other stories of interest:

1. Time Warner Cable Will Introduce WiMax Wireless Broadband Service This Fall
2. Texas Customer Goes to War With Time Warner Cable & AT&T Over Internet Overcharging After Getting Huge Bill
3. Group Project: Let’s Rebut The Latest from Time Warner
4. Affected by the Time Warner Outage? Get One Day Service Credit
5. Time Warner Cable 1st Quarter Results Media Pack