Verizon is an expert at building better networks in hard-to-reach places. We created the first mobile network in Minecraft by making a phone that connects to the real world without leaving the game. Thanks to Verizon, Minecraft players can use video game cell phones to connect with the real world. They can video chat with real friends, send selfies, browse the web, and even order pizza, all without leaving the game.

In the world of Minecraft, almost everything is made of blocks. So we wrote code that translates real-world things like web pages, streaming video, and photos into blocks so they can be built in the world of Minecraft in real time. This system made it possible for influential Minecraft YouTube stars to use a cell phone made of blocks to do things you’d normally do with a real cell phone. They made video calls to friends in the real world, browsed the web, sent selfies, and even ordered pizza without leaving the game. By creating demo videos of the network in action, they reached a huge audience of fans on YouTube.

YouTube stars CaptainSparklez and SethBling released demos showing the capabilities of the Verizon network in Minecraft and earned over 6 million views and 36 million social impressions without paid media support. Their videos got coverage online on Mashable, Kotaku, IGN, Forbes.com, and more. Our videos made their way to the front page of Reddit’s /r/videos, gathering 8,000 upvotes and 1,300 comments. The open-source project powering the whole thing gathered attention from developers, making it to the front page of Hacker News.