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Unlike many southern New Mexico customers Tuesday who had problems making electronic purchases, Rennette Apodaca, left, and daughter Serina Apodaca have no problems Wednesday at Dillard's in the Mesilla Valley Mall after Qwest restored fiber-optic service.

LAS CRUCES - Frustrations of many southern New Mexicans ran high Tuesday when they found it difficult to make purchases on their credit and debit cards or even access ATMs because fiber-optic data communications lines were cut in three separate incidents near Socorro, Tijeras and Clovis.

But New Mexico State University economist Chris Erickson said Wednesday there shouldn't be any long-lasting effects to the region's economy.

"If anything, the outage illustrates the need for high-quality services," said Erickson, who monitors economic trends and conditions for Las Cruces and New Mexico. "Traditionally, we haven't had those high-quality services here anyway. We don't have the high-quality Internet service that other cities have."

But Erickson said the frustration was understandable when consumers who tried to buy gas, food or other goods and services with a credit card or debit card for more than three hours Tuesday couldn't do so.

"The frustration, in dollar values, probably felt by people would be significant," Erickson said. "But in the long term, it's high unlikely that will have an overall effect on our economy. My guess is that sales that were lost Tuesday will be made up ... in the days to come. People will adjust and change their spending habits to accommodate."

One unidentified resident said they tried to initially purchase gasoline in the unincorporated village of Do-a Ana, after telephone and Internet service was interrupted, shortly before 4 p.m. Tuesday.

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When electronic pumps at the Do-a Ana gas station wouldn't accept the resident's credit and debit cards because data lines to complete the transaction were down a decision was made to drive to another station in Las Cruces.

But the credit and debit cards failed there, too, and frustration peaked when the person went to a nearby ATM but discovered that it was also inoperable.

"I don't carry a lot of cash, so I use my debit card a lot," said Regina Salgado, a part-time secretary and Do-a Ana Community College student. "I know a lot of people who are the same way, so I can understand the frustration if somebody is trying to pay for something but isn't carrying enough cash to pay for it. I would've been ticked off, too."

But there's something to be said about small-town business practices. In Mesilla, Jerry Harrell, general manager of the Double Eagle Restaurant, said the outage didn't create any significant problems.

"It didn't really affect us at all," Harrell said. "If it had affected credit card purchases, we would've just switched to the old manual method where we would have inputted the card information later."

In Silver City, owners of several businesses also said the outage didn't pose much of an inconvenience.

"Small town perks," said Rob Connoley, of the Curious Kumquat Gastro Pub and Gourmet Grocery. "We just let our customers go home with their food and come back (Wednesday) to pay. Of course everyone did."

Kelly Trinkle Thai, owner of Curl up and Dye Hair Salon, echoed that.

"They just come to pay later. No big. Things happen."

Heather Stephens Grant, of Cellular Connection, said the store went back to the "old school" style of conducting business during the outage.

"I just took the checks without running them, and the credit cards, we swiped them and ran the card the next day," Grant said.

At White Sands Missile Range, where the military installation's daily economic impact on southern New Mexico's economy is in excess of $1 million, Tuesday still turned out to be business as usual.

"Like every other community in southern New Mexico, White Sands experienced it share of problems and concerns associated with the outage," said Monte Marlin, WSMR spokeswoman. "But it happened so late in the work day for us that it really didn't have any (negative) effect at all on contractors and the general business conducted here."

Silver City Sun-News Bureau Chief Christine Steele contributed to this story.

Steve Ramirez can be reached at (575) 541-5452.

No sale

•With Tuesday's widespread communications failure throughout almost all of southern New Mexico, many business transactions couldn't be made because credit and debit cards and other electronic transfers could not be processed.

•Many businesses posted signs telling customers just that.

•The outage also prevented some ATMs from processing bank transfers and issuing cash to customers trying to use their bank cards.

•However, the decline in sales caused by the outage are not expected to have a long-lasting effect on the southern New Mexico economy.