AT&T outage costing Five O'Clock Steakhouse thousands



MILWAUKEE (WITI) -- Five O'Clock Steakhouse, one of Milwaukee's very popular restaurants, says spotty AT&T internet access over the past couple weeks has been costing them about a third of their customers.

The restaurant has been around since 1948 and was recently named one of Travel Channel's best steakhouses in the country. The establishment has become even more retro -- although unintentionally -- after losing internet access this week.

"We're doing it the manual, old school way -- getting the customer's names and signatures and swiping and yeah, like they did back in the 80's," said General Manager Stelio Kalkounos.

Staff on Tuesday, February 25th found their phone and internet services were no longer working, knocking out the capacity to process credit cards, book reservations online and stream background music.

"Right away what I did was had calls forwarded to my cell phone," said Kalkounos. "I didn't want to lose anything because I knew I wasn't getting anything online and I couldn't take the chance of losing one reservation."

Kalkounos says online service Opentable garners the restaurant many of their new customers and without internet, business is down about 30% over the week.

AT&T says they are working to correct the situation. A spokesman for the company released a statement saying: Due to weather-related cable damage, a limited number of downtown Milwaukee customers may be experiencing issues with AT&T wireline services. Technicians are working to restore service as quickly as possible.

The company hopes to have services restored by next week.

Although AT&T couldn't say how many customers are affected, they maintain it is a very limited number. FOX6 found at least one other nearby business reporting problems with service this week.