Residents and visitors in the Silver Valley area of Northern Idaho just got a boost to their network service. Verizon engineers recently completed an upgrade to the cell sites serving the area, deploying fiber cables to move data from local cell towers through the rest of the network. This upgrade doubles the amount of data cell sites can process, meaning more customers can connect to the network at the same time and can do more when they are connected - stream more movies, send more emails, and video conference with friends, family and colleagues more seamlessly.

The upgrade also lowers latency for customers, meaning their devices will be faster to connect and respond, and it lays the infrastructure for additional cell sites coming to the area in the future. Fiber cables offer a far better way to move vast amounts of data across long distances quickly and economically. Fiber not only provides far greater capacity than past connections, it is more reliable, can manage packet-based IP, the basis of all Internet traffic, and fiber signals can travel longer distances.

For Silver Valley customers this means more people doing more things faster on a more reliable network. Verizon engineers, unable to access the cell site with four-wheel drive vehicles and chained tires, relied on a side-by-side Off Highway Vehicle (OHD) to traverse the frozen area and gain access. Having access to these vehicles in Verizon's fleet of vehicles is one of many ways Verizon prepares for extreme weather.

Verizon's network is built and fortified in anticipation of hurricanes, wildfires, ice storms, earthquakes and tornadoes, and Verizon's engineers are prepared to keep people connected in all conditions.