Chicago and suburban Xfinity customers flooded Twitter on Tuesday morning with complaints about their internet and phone service being down, prompting “Chicagoland” to trend on the platform nationally.

       While the company hadn’t issued a statement on its social media channels early Tuesday, the outage seemed to be more widespread with news outlets from the San Francisco Bay Area to the East Coast also reporting outages.

       Local hot spot connectivity also was causing an issue for some users, according to anecdotal accounts. The website Downcaster also was reporting more than 50,000 Xfinity users experiencing outages.

       A Comcast service vehicle in 2015. (Justin Sullivan / Getty Images)

       The outages appear to be concentrated in the Bay Area, Chicago, Philadelphia and New York, according to a Downcaster heat map, with other smaller hotspots scattered throughout the country.

       When 31-year-old John Lang woke up around 7 a.m. Tuesday, he noticed his internet was out.

       The marketing director works fully remote and is one of the only people in his company located in Chicago, he said. Lang attempted to disconnect from the wifi and went to Xfinity’s app to try to reset his modem, with little luck.

       ”It was out so bad that the, the app couldn’t do troubleshooting,” he said, adding that he connected to his phone’s hotspot to have access to the internet in the meantime. “I’m currently waiting it out. It’s been in and out all morning.”

       Lang said he used to use RCN when he lived farther north, but the Loop building he now lives in only offers Xfinity.

       Just before 9 a.m., Lang’s internet appeared to be working again — but at slow speeds.

       Sarah Roach, 40, said Tuesday is her typical work-from-home day, but around 7:15 a.m. she received a notification her email was out.

       Roach said she noticed there was a red light on her router that she had never seen before, so she called Xfinity’s customer service line, which was busy.

       Roach, who works as a director of accounting for a third-party administrator for employee benefits, said she then went on Twitter. and noticed others in Chicago also were facing outages.

       “Unfortunately, this is an extremely busy time for us,” she said. “Since we rely on Zoom so much, and I’m working remote ... it was just the worst, worst timing.”

       Roach said she connected to her phone’s hot spot and has been trying to reschedule meetings to the afternoon or handle things via email in the meantime. But many of the files she needs are on a shared drive or cloud-based, which she can’t access without her internet.

       ”It’s just really difficult when you rely so heavily on the internet for everything,” she said.

       She had a glimmer of hope when she saw the red light on her router blink to white around 8:15 a.m. — only for it to again go down minutes later. Since then, the connection had been off and on.

       Roach, who lives in Ukrainian Village, said her neighborhood doesn’t have many internet options.

       ”So you rely on Comcast, and it’s so expensive. ... It’s so frustrating that you have one option that’s not reliable,” she said. “That is a big pain point for me.”

       Check back for updates.

       The Tribune’s Lisa Donovan and Katherine Rosenberg-Douglas contributed.

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