Political Calls Jam Comcast System In New England

Telecommunications company Comcast says massive numbers of automatically dialed political telephone calls that caused service problems in New England have dropped off sharply.

A Comcast spokesman in Philadelphia, Charlie Douglas, says the volume of calls dropped precipitously starting at about 8:30 p.m., easing the service problems. He said only the New Hampshire area and perhaps parts of Massachusetts appeared to have been affected.

The Philadelphia-based company said congestion resulting from the calls Monday night forced it to reroute phone traffic as it tried to identify the carrier whose telephone numbers were generating them.

The outages came as political campaigns hit the phones to woo voters before Tuesday's midterm elections. The New Hampshire Democratic Party said it lost phone service at local campaign offices at 11 locations around the state.