Major cellphone outage reported in New York http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20060810/tc_nm/telecoms_newyork_dc_1
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Sprint Nextel Corp. (NYSE:S - news) said an outage of its cellphone service in parts of the New York borough of Queens on Thursday was caused by water damage to network equipment due to a burst pipe. The outage came amid intensified airport security after British police said they had foiled a plot to blow up several aircraft flying between Britain and the United States. Two major New York airports -- JFK and LaGuardia -- are in Queens. The service interruption, reported earlier by the New York City police, was caused by damage to equipment in Verizon Communications Inc.'s (NYSE:VZ - news) wired network, Sprint spokesman Mark Elliott said. Sprint, the No. 3 U.S. mobile provider, said communications around up to 75 of its wireless towers in Flushing, Queens, were affected. Cellphone calls travel over wired networks between wireless towers. A Verizon Communications spokeswoman confirmed that some network gear was damaged by a leak at its facilities in Queens. Its wireless venture with Vodafone Group Plc (VOD.L), Verizon Wireless, said it was not aware of any problems with its network in Queens. Verizon expected the problem to be fixed by evening. A New York police spokesman said the alert it sent out about the outage was "an FYI." "It has nothing to do with anything else. It's not criminal," the spokesman said. Cingular Wireless, a venture of AT&T Inc. (NYSE:T - news) and BellSouth Corp. (NYSE:BLS - news), said it was not aware of any network problems in Queens. Reply with a "Thank you" if you liked this post. _____________________________ MEDIANEWS mailing list [email protected] To unsubscribe send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
