A tour of Verizon's Des Moines switch center reveals the key to its cell network in Iowa

From barnyards to batteries, Verizon's Des Moines switch center works to ensure uninterrupted service during everything from concerts to catastrophes.

"People take for granted having phone service," senior communications manager Liz Gelardi said during a recent tour of the center in a secret location in Des Moines. "Most people have no idea what we do, and that's the point."

It's location is kept secret as a layer of protection against physical or digital attacks.

"For Iowa, this is a nerve center," senior director of network assurance Rick Goldschmidt said. "Ninety percent of Verizon wireless comes through here."

The facility first began operations in 1993, and has continued to be upgraded as demand and technology evolved. Currently, the center can handle 5G signals and processes almost one million gigabytes of data per day, the equivalent of streaming 400,000 hours of high-definition video.

How the center keeps Verizon wireless service seamless

Inside, the building is designed for resiliency and redundancy.

"This whole facility is pretty much self-contained," Goldschmidt said. The first layer of redundancy is the data processors themselves, which are responsible for taking requests from local cell centers and sending those requests to the relevant server, whether it’s a website database or another call center.

"This equipment can never go down," Goldschmidt said while standing by one such data processor. "There's another device elsewhere to seamlessly take over in case of a problem."

With power outages common during the storm season, making sure the facility never loses power is a key concern. To that end, the center has multiple electricity options besides commercial power.

The first is a massive battery array, that will immediately begin powering the facility if commercial power goes out. While it has eight hours of power, it's only meant to be used for a few minutes while the back-up generator comes on.

"We test this every one to two weeks," Goldschmidt said. "Because it has to work when it's needed. It's a 750-kilowatt generator. A back-up generator for a home is seven or eight kilowatts, so this is 700 times stronger."

The back-up generator can run for 10 days on a full tank of diesel gas. If something goes wrong with it, there's a generator on wheels that can be plugged into the building to keep power.

How Verizon responds to disasters or prepares for major events

Besides ensuring that day-to-day communications of Iowans are smooth, the center also helps with disaster responses or in major events where demand for data is high. In such instances, the center has a barnyard of temporary assets to deploy.

"They're all named after animals," Gelardi said. "There's GOATs, COWs, COLTs and more." A GOAT or "generator on a light truck" is most commonly used in the event of power outages at local centers. COWs, or "cell on wheels," and COLTs, or "cell on a light truck," are use to expand network capacity in a variety of situations.

Earlier this week a super COLT was deployed to the Iowa Speedway in Newton to help keep up with the increased demand at the IndyCar races. This kind of proactive step is often taken when high-traffic events are known in advance. For example, a mobile cell site is being deployed to Knoxville for this year's RAGBRAI.

The other primary use of the temporary assets is to respond in the event of natural disasters, something that has come in handy this season.

During flooding, tornadoes and severe storms, power generation or the fiber lines that carry data can be compromised. To ensure first responders and local communities don't lose service, the facility has a number of tools to deploy. For example, Sioux Falls currently has a SPOT, or "Satellite Pico-cell on a trailer," to help keep communication lines open during the disaster recovery process after flooding in June.

Assets, including a SPOT that has since returned to the barnyard, were also deployed to the site of tornado damage in Minden earlier this year. These are just some of the features that the switch center uses to keep its network online no matter the circumstances.

"This facility will always be a part of the continued existence of the Verizon network in Iowa," Goldschimdt said.

Editor's note: Liz Gelardi's name was misspelled in a previous version of this article.

Ryan Magalhã es is a reporter for the Register. Reach them at rmagalhaes@dmreg.com .

This article originally appeared on Des Moines Register: A tour of Verizon's Des Moines switch center reveals the key to its cell network in Iowa