Hurricane Sandy Knocks 25 Percent of Cell Sites Offline

Not surprisingly, the massive hurricane that slammed into the East Coast Monday night caused some disruption to cell phone service in the region on all four major wireless carriers.

Federal Communications Commission Chairman Julius Genachowski said that about 25 percent of cell sites in 158 counties across 10 states were not operational as of 10 a.m. Eastern yesterday.

On the wireline side, meanwhile, about 25 percent of consumers in the core area hit by Sandy were without broadband, pay TV, or home phone service. In some places, it was higher or lower, but that was the average, an FCC spokesman said.

In a Tuesday evening note posted to its website, Sprint said it is "experiencing service impacts" in the states hit by Hurricane Sandy. "This is due to loss of commercial power, flooding, loss of cell site backhaul connections, site access, and damaging debris," according to Sprint.

The carrier said its technicians are still assessing the damages in some areas; other regions are not yet safe to enter. "Given the weather conditions, we ask that our customers remain patient at this time and exercise caution in the aftermath of the recent events," Sprint said.

Sprint said it will provide 14 days of free service and 25 Sprint emergency response team (ERT) wireless devices to local agencies located in an "state of emergency" area, should they need them, including Atlantic County, N.J., the Maryland Emergency Management Agency, the Maryland National Guard, and the Maryland State Police.

At AT&T, the company tweeted last night that "crews will be working around the clock to restore service in areas experiencing issues due to #Sandy." On Twitter, many users vented about their lack of service while others said they were not experiencing any issues. Here in Brooklyn, service on my AT&T iPhone 5 has remained steady.

On T-Mobile, the carrier said Tuesday night that 90 percent of its network is operational in Washington, D.C. and 80 percent is working in New York City.

"Restoration work continues in the harder hit areas of lower Manhattan, Staten Island, Long Island, coastal and Northern New Jersey, Connecticut and portions of Pennsylvania, including Philadelphia," T-Mobile said.

Verizon Wireless, meanwhile, has been busy re-tweeting messages from customers who claim their Verizon service has been steady throughout the hurricane, but there were a few people on Twitter who experienced downtime on the network. "Anyone know when Verizon cell service will be restored? This is really cramping my style," @hunterw tweeted Tuesday night.

On the Verizon Communications side, meanwhile, the company said several Verizon Central Offices in Lower Manhattan, Queens, and Long Island were flooded, causing power failures. "While these sites are currently on battery power, the inevitable loss of power requires that all equipment at these sites be powered down to prevent damage," Verizon said, which will affect Verizon FiOS, high-speed Internet, and telephone service.

Earlier Tuesday afternoon, Apple's iMessage also experienced a delay. Messages would not go through, with Apple finally asking users if they wished to send the message as a text. As of Tuesday evening, however, the disruption appeared to be fixed.