Ever wonder how your wireless phone works?

Of course not. Just like a car or an Apple Computer, we don’t wonder about these things. We just turn them on, and they work. Miracles abound, but we don’t really think about them.

I had a chance recently to think about — and actually see — how my wireless phone works. It was pretty impressive.

I visited the Verizon Wireless switching facility, “Mobile Telephone Switching Office” or “switch” in Orlando. It’s a fortress where all Verizon calls to and from Central Florida feed through. This otherwise non-descript building, with its brick trim and secured entrance, represents the brain and spine that mean when I hit “Send,” my call gets sent. Or when I log on with my broadband access card, Gmail comes to my laptop. It knows all.

The name “Hal” came to mind.

My first impression, though? Cool.

Not just the place. Yeah, it was cool in that groovy, cool kind of way (at least for a pseudo propeller head like me). But it was cool, as in the type of cool 60 tons of AC power will generate just to keep one of the server farms chilled near 70 degrees.

Without it, the servers would fry in an hour.

This building and its guts serve as the main call-processing hub for the region. It handles tens of millions of voice calls and wireless data transmissions (text and picture messages, downloads, emails, wireless internet connections and more) daily. Throughout Florida, about 1 billion voice and data transmissions and 2 billion minutes of airtime are completed on the Verizon Wireless network each month.

The list of apps that drive the system and make “Send” or Voicemail work include six racks of voicemail servers measuring seven feet tall; the brains that know JZ even has voicemail, but that I’m too cheap for some other application — so it automatically denies that service. Late on my bill? It knows that too; and three racks dedicated to echo detection and correction, so my call doesn’t suffer that delay and tin-box echo we used to suffer just a few years back.

For those of us who live in hurricane-prone zones, what’s really impressive is the 1.5 megawatt generator that’s physically twice the size of my home office. Power that baby up (and they do, weekly), and it’ll power this 45,000-square-foot place for the better part of a work week. And for those times brown-outs and temporary black outs emerge, one room is dedicated to what looks like a salt water aquarium shop where the owner hasn’t cleaned the tanks in weeks. These batteries can power the place for up to 12 hours.

Try that with your humble APCC battery back up.

My kids actually should pray at the doorstep of The Switch. The place place processes advanced apps like V CAST music and video services, and other information and entertainment applications. And since it’s built to withstand a Cat 5 hurricane (they don’t get much worse – yet), Hannah, the Jonases and all the other boppers will still come through loud and clear…

…even when we’re cooking with Sterno.