HONOLULU -- Oahu resident Ian Kurihara discovered early Tuesday morning he wasn't able to go online.

“I was annoyed at first I was like is it a problem with my technical equipment, I checked my router. I did the usual turn off the computer, restart it, unplug everything plug everything back in still not working,” said Kurihara.

Kurihara stayed up late to play an online video game, which debuted at midnight.

“I called up some of my friends who were up really late because we were all suppose to play Star Craft II but didn’t happen,” said Kurihara.

But others taking advantage of Starbucks free Internet service Tuesday said the Oceanic Time Warner outage went unnoticed.

“The only difference I noticed is Internet was very slow but it wouldn’t have peaked me that the Internet was down or the cable was down,” said Jayson Laporga.

However tens of thousands of customers lost Internet, cable TV and phone service.

Restaurants experienced difficulties filling their seats, including the Hula Grill on Maui.

“Our reservation system is also Internet based, so anybody that makes reservation or usually makes a reservation over the Internet was not able today,” said Maui Grill manager Lucas Stansberry.

On Oahu, Neil Rose arrived at work to find communication lines cut-off at a Honolulu financial firm.

“We come in and find basically there's no Internet. There's no data, no stock quotes, no bond quotes, we're shut off from the world information wise,” said Neil Rose.

Luckily, the company has a back up provider.

“It’s kind of crippling actually you wont get time sensitive e-mails on time there could be issues that your other co-workers or consultants will tell you but it doesn’t get through,” said Kurihara.

Officials said it could take five weeks for a ship to come to Hawaii to repair the cable.

Oceanic rerouted the data to keep customers connected.