Verizon installs two new cell sites

The CNMI’s leading telephone firm, Verizon, announced the addition of two new CDMA 1x cellular sites to its network. The new cellular site locations are on Capitol Hill by the Legislature and on the island of Tinian.

Verizon general manager Tony Mosley said the two new sites “are part of an ongoing plan by the company to continue to bring the people of the CNMI a world-class CDMA 1x cellular network. We’ve been experiencing greater user demand in and around the Capitol Hill area and felt it was the right time to address that demand with an additional cell site. This brings the total number of Verizon CDMA 1x cellular sites in the CNMI to nine.”

Mosley went on to say that Tinian has always been in the company’s CDMA 1x roll-out plan since it was launched on Saipan in March 2004. Due, however, to various local economic factors, it took a while longer to bring the island on-line, he said.

“Now that we’re up, the people of Tinian can experience and enjoy the voice and data quality of CDMA 1x plus the cool handsets and fun applications those phones bring to the user,” he said.

Inos Yamada of Verizon Network Operations said he is extremely pleased to have the addition of the two sites as well. “Capitol Hill is a major hub of cellular switching activity. We’ve added extra channels to our existing Mt. Tapochao site to handle the added cell traffic in that location—but knew in the long run it was better to build a complete cellular site and give our customers the best possible signal coverage.”

Darrell Fair, Assistant Customer Relations on Tinian, was equally enthusiastic about the CDMA 1x network coming to Tinian. “Even though we’re small in population we get a lot of travelers going back and forth from here to Saipan. It’s important for those Saipan travelers to be able to use their CDMA phones on Tinian. And, of course, cellular users on Tinian are really happy to be able to buy all the cool CDMA phones like the LG 6100 and Kyocera Koi camera phones and use them on Tinian.”

Verizon marketing manager Russ Quinn added that Verizon also has plans to bring its CDMA 1x network to Rota in the near future. “Our network plan from the very beginning was to bring all the islands the seamless voice and data quality of CDMA 1x. Rota is our very next cellular location.”

For more information about Verizon’s CDMA 1x network, visit the Verizon website at www.vzpacifica.net or contact their customer care office at 234-7143. (PR)