Hundreds of thousands of Time Warner Cable customers were left without phone service due to some technical difficulties the company is facing.

Time Warner Cable (TWC) is the nation's second-largest cable company, amassing a customer base of roughly 5 million residential phone subscribers as of Dec. 31, 2012. After numerous people started complaining about disruptions and problems with their service, the company acknowledged that intermittent technical problems are indeed preventing some customers from using the Time Warner Cable home phone service.

The issue is far from minor, as more than 800,000 customers are potentially affected by the disruptions, Time Warner Cable spokesman Bobby Amirshahi told Bloomberg in an e-mailed statement:

"There's a technical issue preventing a limited number of our home phone customers from placing or receiving calls on an intermittent basis," explains the company. "Our engineers are working on the problem to restore service as quickly as possible."

According to Time Warner Cable, company crews are currently working to restore digital home phone service for affected customers in several states, including northeast Ohio, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Kentucky. Officials say the intermittent technical problems started around 3 p.m. on Sunday, April 7.

The cable company estimates that customers are experiencing dropped calls or no dial tone at all, while some may just have a busy signal when picking up the phone. Officials gave no estimate yet for when the service will be fully restored, but crews are reportedly working to resolve the issues as soon as possible. Amirshahi added that emergency calls to 911 are still being routed.

A number of home phone customers, especially Midwestern Time Warner Cable subscribers, are still not able to place or receive calls on a regular basis. Officials did not offer any details on the cause of the malfunction or where exactly the failure occurred.

While the prominence of mobile phones makes the situation somewhat less severe, a disruption in service affecting a considerable number of people is still cause for concern, especially with no estimate as to when all will resume as normal. For now, it seems that restoring the service for all affected customers is taking a bit longer than anticipated.