This week at CTIA 2011 in Orlando, Verizon decided to give a handful of journalists a tour of its super switch facility – a hurricane-proof communications center that can survive a category five hurricane. The facility is 43,000 square feet and handles voice and data traffic in central Florida, but it can probably handle a greater area of the state if necessary.
The super switch is pretty critical in making sure that Verizon customers, law enforcement agencies and emergency services in central Florida can still communicate during the worst hurricanes.
During the tour, some of our fellow journalists joked that they’d know exactly where to go if faced with a hurricane in central Florida. But it’s true — it is probably one of the safest places to be in this hurricane-prone state: it’s made of brick and concrete and reinforced with steel walls and contains several generators and batteries to keep things running in case of a power outage.
The super switch also has beds and showers in case employees need to spend the night, or a few nights, inside the facility during a hurricane. Luckily, there haven’t been any disastrous hurricanes since the facility has been built, but should there ever be one, Verizon Wireless is prepared.
Once we got through the doors, it was mostly empty hallways and rooms we couldn’t enter. There were a small handful of employees in the back who monitored the network and made sure things were in good running order. If anything is close to failing or if there are outages, they would be responsible for getting things back in shape.
So, let’s start our tour of the facility on the next page!
(Skip to the last page for the video tour in 1080p HD)