Thousands of northern Illinois Comcast customers, including those in Princeton, Dixon, Sterling and Rock Falls, and even some in nearby states, were without phone and internet service for most of the afternoon and on into the evening Wednesday after a truck collided with the company's equipment in Chicago.

A truck traveling in an easement closed to vehicles struck Comcast's network on the south side of Chicago and did significant damage, which caused the outage, said Jack Segal, vice president of communications for the greater Chicago region.

That part of the network feeds into central Illinois and other locations, Segal said.

“We are on site working to repair the damage and have been able to restore service in most of the affected areas," Segal said. "We are working to restore service in other affected areas as quickly as possible.”

As of 10 p.m. Wednesday, service had been restored to most, if not all, of the affected customers in the immediate area. An estimate of how many homes were affected was not available.