NEW YORK -- A water leak damaged equipment in a central office facility owned by Verizon, causing cell phone service to be knocked out to Sprint Nextel customers in Queens on Thursday.

The damaged equipment serves customers using the old Nextel nationwide network in a major part of Queens, some parts of Brooklyn and Long Island.  As a result, the outage only affects longtime Nextel customers.

Regular telephone service has not been impacted by the water leak.  The outage most likely affected some traveler's at LaGuardia and JFK airports.