The wired service outages could include the company's high-speed FiOS fiber-optic service as well as data and voice services over copper lines, Verizon spokesman Alberto Canal said. Verizon can't restore many of its services in areas that still don't have commercial power, he said. For safety reasons, the carrier's crews have to wait until power cables are placed before bringing communications back, he said.

Friday's time estimate by Verizon, the incumbent wireline carrier based in New York, was its longest yet. Though service is steadily being restored, the deadly storm that made landfall late Monday with ferocious winds, rain and floods has proved also to be a lingering communications catastrophe for residents of some areas.

Verizon's own headquarters suffered major flooding, though that building and four other facilities in lower Manhattan and Long Island have been brought back online with emergency power. The carrier's crews are working around the clock to restore backup power to several other flooded sites in lower Manhattan and Queens.

Mobile service also is coming back slowly. As of 10 a.m. Eastern Time on Friday, 15 percent of cell sites were still out of action, according to the U.S. Federal Communications Commission. That's an improvement from on Thursday morning.

The new figure is slightly more positive than it seems, because the agency has tightened the region in which it's estimating mobile outages. The Friday report covers 146 counties in seven states. The FCC is no longer collecting data from Delaware, Massachusetts or Rhode Island because it says service in those states has been largely restored.