The FSB also said that MI6 officials had paid Skripal for the information in foreign currency, which was transferred monthly to his account in a Spanish bank.

"During the investigation, Skripal admitted his guilt and gave truthful testimony about his criminal activities, which the court had taken into consideration," the FSB said.

Chief Military Prosecutor Sergei Fridinsky said he was satisfied with the verdict, adding that Skripal would serve his sentence in a high-security penal colony.

"Skripal was accused of spying for foreign intelligence services," the prosecutor said, adding that Russia's security services would definitely be able to repair the damage Skripal did to the state.

Fridinsky said he had asked the court to sentence Skripal to 15 years, but the court had taken into account mitigating circumstances such as the convict's admission of guilt, assistance to the investigation and poor health.

The service interruption, reported earlier by the New York City police, was caused by damage to equipment in Verizon Communications Inc.'s wired network, Sprint spokesman Mark Elliott said.

Sprint, the No. 3 U.S. mobile provider, said communications around up to 75 of its wireless towers in Flushing, Queens, were affected. Cellphone calls travel over wired networks between wireless towers.

A Verizon Communications spokeswoman confirmed that some network gear was damaged by a leak at its facilities in Queens. Its wireless venture with Vodafone Group Plc, Verizon Wireless, said it was not aware of any problems with its network in Queens.

Verizon expected the problem to be fixed by evening.

A New York police spokesman said the alert it sent out about the outage was "an FYI."

"It has nothing to do with anything else. It's not criminal," the spokesman said.

Cingular Wireless, a venture of AT&T Inc. and BellSouth Corp., said it was not aware of any network problems in Queens.