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The Spectrum internet outage blamed on Hurricane Beryl came to an end Tuesday evening, but not without some healthy outrage.
Whether it was with an old-timey, sepia tone photo of folks sitting outside a house or a gif of Rowan Atkinson’s Mr. Bean flicking grass on the side of a road, many Texans on Tuesday found creative and comical ways to express their disgust with the Spectrum internet outage that sent much of the state back to the proverbial Stone Age.
But the outage was no laughing matter as residents dependent on Spectrum — one of the few internet service providers in the Rio Grande Valley — to connect them to the rest of the world, not to mention businesses, local governments and emergency agencies, all had to make do with their cell service.
As a result, some emergency agency phone lines went down, and counties and cities struggled to maintain lines of communication with residents as Tuesday got off to a sluggish start for the area.
Those included Hidalgo and Starr counties as well as the cities of San Benito, Pharr, La Joya, La Grulla, not to mention businesses like Brownsville hotels, and schools such as South Texas College.
Finally, after about seven or eight hours, there was connectivity.
“As of 7:30 p.m. Spectrum services have been restored in parts of Texas that were affected by a third-party infrastructure issue caused by the impact of Hurricane Beryl,” a Charter Communications spokesperson said via email. “We apologize for the inconvenience.”
It’s not immediately clear who that third party is or what their role was in this “infrastructure issue.”
No matter, because users certainly took to social media to vent their frustrations.
In response to social media posts from Spectrum, X users took issue with the original post reporting the outage, which referred to the impacted region as “the Texas area.”
“‘The Texas area.’ Big area!” Johnny Appellee from Dallas said via X.
“The funniest part of this is the ‘Texas area’ bit,” Zachary Stephenson of Bastrop also said via X. “That’s a big freaking ‘area’. Normally don’t see area to describe an entire state, much less one as big as Texas. #SpectrumDown”
Austin X user Alex felt the same way, posting: “I like how they say ‘Texas area’ like it’s some neighborhood and not the entire state.”
Due to the profanity-laced messages, and this being a family friendly newspaper, there weren’t many other examples that could be shared here.
Happy scrolling.
