GRAYSON COUNTY, Texas (KTEN) — “Those things happen. This isn’t the first time the internet has gone out. We just deal with it the best we can. That’s all we can do,” said Shay Farley, manager of Triple R Barbecue.
About 2,100 Sparklight customers, including residents and businesses in Whitelight and Tom Bean, were without internet and phone service from Sunday night through Monday afternoon.
A company spokesman said the outage was caused by damage to fiber optic lines by a third party.
“People who want to do bad things will do bad things, so you just have to accept what’s going to happen,” said Julie Shaw, a Whitelight homeowner who lost her internet connection.
For some homeowners in Whitelight, the power outage wasn’t a big deal.
“I don’t really care. I use it. I scroll and I do everything. But it’s not a life or death thing,” Shaw said.
But for other restaurants, including Whitelight’s, it disrupted the running of day-to-day operations.
We spoke with the manager at Triple R BBQ, who told us that a power outage had meant the card readers were down for part of the day, forcing employees to turn away some customers.
“We ask them if they have cash, and most people who pay by card don’t, so we tell them they can go to the ATM and get the money and come back. A lot of people are willing to do that, but a lot of people aren’t,” Farley said.
Farley said customer sales were cut in half on Monday due to the power outage.
Whitewright and Tom Bean have noticed the impact too, with city hall staff no longer receiving their bills.
We reached out to Sparklight about the disruptions caused by the outage in a written statement, which said: “Some Sparklight customers in the Howe, Van Alstyne, Melissa, Anna and McKinney, Texas areas were without service from approximately 10:30 pm until approximately 3:30 pm on Sunday,” said Tammy Goebel, director of internal communications.
