Methods and apparatuses for controlling load balancing of modems may include receiving an indication of impairment of a channel, placing modems using the impaired channel into a partial service mode and removing the impaired channel from a list of channels available for load balancing, monitoring the quality of the impaired channel, and, responsive to detection of acceptable quality on the impaired channel, removing the modems from partial service mode and adding the channel back to the list of channels available for load balancing. Another method includes, but is not limited to, receiving an indication of a partial service mode for a modem, incrementing a partial service mode counter for a channel associated with the partial service mode indication, computing a partial service mode metric based in part upon the partial service mode counter, and responsive to a determination that the partial service mode metric meets a threshold, determining an allocation of modems to channels.