Sandy Knocks Out Cable, Telephone, Wireless in 10 States

Post-Tropical Cyclone Sandy knocked out mobile, phone and cable service in many parts of the eastern U.S. on Monday, with about one in four cell sites affected in the hardest-hit band of the country between Virginia and Massachusetts, according to the FCC.

"This was and still is a devastating storm, with a substantial and serious impact on our country’s communications infrastructure," FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski said yesterday on a conference call.

Verizon said that not only was its cell service struggling, its fiber and home broadband services were also experiencing extreme difficulties, thanks to underground tunnels being flooded by the coastal surge and high tides during Monday's storm.

Sandy affected Sprint Nextel service mostly in the New York tri-state area (New York, Connecticut and New Jersey) and in Pennsylvania and parts of New England, spokeswoman Crystal Davis said. Flooding, debris, and failure of commercial power and the wired links to cell sites were major causes of outages, she said.

AT&T also said its network had problems in areas hit heavily by the storm.

"We are in the initial stages of performing an on-the-ground assessment of our network for damage, and crews will be working around the clock to restore service. We are deploying personnel and equipment as soon as it is safe to do so," the carrier said in a statement.

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