HOUSTON – Unless you work downtown, you may not know there are tunnels connecting dozens of buildings.
Thousands of people use those air-conditioned tunnels to beat the heat, but up until recently the cell phone service was a no-go.
If you access the more than six miles of shops and restaurants 20 feet below the street, you can now call, text and Snapchat.
Verizon worked with all other cell phone carriers to make the upgrade. The cell service covers 43 buildings.
This is great news to the thousands of people who use the tunnels every day. But, the installation was actually fast-tracked for safety reasons, like life-saving technology.
Now a city firefighter/paramedic/police officer with his own two-way radio can access the city of Houston Public Safety Dispatch Center.
They were never able to do that before. You couldn't even call out, not even for 911.
Now you can!
And while this project is not Super Bowl-related, you can't help but think of the benefit to all the underground shops and restaurants when the big game does come to Houston.
So many Super Bowl-related activities are going to be happening downtown.
Making calls is cool and all, but in 2016, it's all about apps and texting and videos.
So what about wi-fi? Will that be available in the tunnels?
The city asked Verizon to put that in, so the city employees would have access to their data.
And it is big enough for everybody to use, so it will be turned on for the public to use here in the next week or so.
And Verizon says that wi-fi is going to be free to use.