On Monday, the people of Manhattan were in trouble, when the landline services and AT&T Inc.'s wireless services came to halt, on account of an equipment failure in Verizon Communications Inc.'s network.

A Verizon Spokeswoman stated that the thunderstorms caused the network's traffic to shut down by damaging the `digital cross-connect'. The users started getting busy signals in place of dial tone. She further added that the initial services are being revived and it will take an hour for the full services to get corrected. The breakdown has affected the smaller fraction of the region including streets of East 40s and East 20s between Fifth Avenue and the east side of the borough. The area affected by the breakdown of wireless services, was even smaller.

Linda Laughlin, a Spokeswoman for Verizon, said, "We have our equipment vendor and technical teams troubleshooting the piece of equipment right now".

The network breakdown has come as a blow to the Company, which is renowned for its network quality. The blots of the damage have also been casted on AT&T's reputation. The Company was also in the news for the coverage issues of the Apple Inc. iPhone. Earlier, in July, AT&T's 3G network called HSUPA experienced slowdown due to a faulty software. But, it took immediate action to fix the problem.