Reuters: Major cellphone outage reported in New York

Major cellphone outage reported in New York

August 10, 2006

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Sprint Nextel Corp. 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 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.

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