Major Hilton Head-area outage ‘could be crippling’ for business. ‘You can’t even call them’
Hilton Head business owner Chuck Lobaugh was on the phone at 10:30 a.m. Monday when it went dead. It was the beginning of a lengthy internet outage that was continuing to affect thousands of residents and businesses across Beaufort County and beyond late Monday afternoon. As of 3 p.m., there still was no service.
“You certainly don’t expect when there’s an outage for it to be a long extended period,” Lobaugh, the owner of Curry Printing HHI, Inc. and FASTSIGNS of Hilton Head Island and Bluffton, said at 2:45 p.m., about 4 hours into the service problems.
The outage, Lobaugh added, “could be crippling” for many businesses because, in this day and age, so much business is conducted over the internet. Both phone systems and credit card processing can be affected, he noted. These days, losing the internet is akin to losing power.
“When you lose your internet as a business, it can completely take you down,” Lobaugh said. “There’s going to be a dollar effect that is a significant business loss most likely.”
Sparklight apologized for the inconvenience and said a portion of its Hargray customers were experiencing slow internet or internet outages due to fiber damage caused by a third-party. It did not identify the location of the damage or say when service would be restored. Hargray, the local internet provider, is now known as Sparklight.
Lee Lucier, local business owner and COO of The Richardson Group, a real estate development and management firm, estimated that between 20 and 30 businesses they represent have been affected by the outage. Local Pie and Fish Casual Coastal Seafood in Coligny are two of the businesses that were knocked out by the outage.
Catherine Reilley, partner at the Coastal Restaurant and Bars (CRAB) group, confirmed that their restaurants, including the Old Oyster Factory and the Crazy Crab have remained open.
To Lobaugh, one of the most shocking aspects of the outage is that a single line cut could have such catastrophic damage, even taking out Sparklight’s internal communications. “You can’t even call them,” Lobaugh said.
At 3:30 p.m., the internet provider said on Facebook that it was now able to receive inbound calls after reports that some customers were unable to reach it by phone. But due to the high volume of calls, technical support chat queues have been closed except for billing inquiries.
Lobaugh planned ahead for such an emergency. He does business with both Hargray and Spectrum in case one goes down. With the backup system, he does not have the same level of service. But at least he’s able to write emails and do some work. The impact is bigger for a restaurant or other type of business that relies more on credit card processing, he noted.
Lobaugh was able to reach Sparklight officials via email. At 2 p.m., an official there referred to the problem as a “major outage in certain areas of SC and GA.” The affected markets are Ridgeland, Bluffton, Hilton Head, Beaufort, Statesboro, Vidalia, Savannah, Hinesville, Reidsville and Kingsland.
If you are a Hilton Head, Bluffton, Port Royal or Beaufort business owner and would like to share information about how the internet service outage is affecting you contact Karl Puckett at kapuckett@islandpacket.com or Chloe Appleby cappleby@islandpacket.com
This story was originally published September 23, 2024 at 3:37 PM with the headline "Major Hilton Head-area outage ‘could be crippling’ for business. ‘You can’t even call them’."
