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C Spire

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C Spire
C Spire
Company typeSubsidiary
IndustryTelecommunications
Founded1988; 36 years ago (1988)
FounderWade H. Creekmore Jr. and James H. "Jimmy" Creekmore Sr.
Headquarters
Ridgeland, Mississippi
,
United States
Number of locations
72 stores, 2 call centers, 4 data centers, 6 sales offices
Area served
Wireless - Mississippi, parts of Alabama and Tennessee. Home Fiber - Mississippi, Alabama and Tennessee. Business - nationwide in the U.S.
Key people
Suzy Hays –President and CEO
ProductsWireless voice and data, Fiber to the Home, Cloud Services, Managed IT Services
ParentTelapex, Inc.
Websitecspire.com

C Spire, formerly known as Cellular South, Inc.,[1] is a privately owned telecommunications and technology company headquartered in Ridgeland, Mississippi. The company consists of three business divisions – Wireless, Home Fiber, and Business.

C Spire owns and has access to low, mid and high-band wireless spectrum in its primary service areas. The division offers 5G and 4G LTE mobile services and has been offering wireless services to customers since 1988. C Spire has wireless customers in Mississippi, the Memphis Metropolitan Area, and parts of Alabama including Mobile and Baldwin County. C Spire sells plans and devices for prepaid and postpaid customers and was the first wireless carrier to offer free incoming calls and versions of unlimited calling plans to customers.

C Spire Home Fiber, which launched one of the nation's first Gigabit speed Fiber to the Home efforts in 2013, provides gig and multi-gig residential fiber internet access for thousands of consumers in Mississippi, Alabama and Tennessee.[2] C Spire owns or manages over 20,000 route miles of buried fiber optic cable.

C Spire Business offers fiber-backed broadband, telephony and IT services and brings together a team of specialized IT experts to deliver solutions that keep businesses prepared for the future. From cloud services to voice and collaboration to managed networks and security, C Spire engineers provide network and IT solutions in both managed and on-premises environments to best fit the needs of customers.

C Spire is owned by the holding company Telapex, Inc.,[3] which also owns Telepak Networks, Inc., and several smaller Mississippi and Alabama telecoms.

Growth and recognition[edit]

In 2006 the firm opened its first sales center outside of its native network footprint.[4] In 2009, the company purchased Alabama-based Corr Wireless, which expanded its coverage in Alabama and moved it into Georgia for the first time (in 2013 Corr Wireless was subsequently sold to AT&T[5]).

The company's wireless division announced on September 22, 2011, that it planned on rebranding from Cellular South to C Spire Wireless to be put into effect on September 26 of that year.[6]

In 2013, C Spire announce it was purchasing Mobile, Alabama based Callis Communications a leading provider of unified cloud services for businesses.

In 2014, the company activated Mississippi's first residential 1 Gbps Fiber to the Home customer in Quitman, Mississippi.

In 2018, the company purchased Teklinks, based in Birmingham, Alabama, to expand their footprint in the commercial and enterprise business, as well as their geographical footprint in the southeast.[7]

In Oct. 2019, C Spire launched C Spire Health,[8] a mobile app to provide health care for people in Mississippi, especially those in rural and under served areas, with minor ailments.[9]

C Spire announced a partnership[10] with Alabama Power on Dec. 5, 2019, to bring Gigabit speed (1000 Mbit/s) internet services to the Birmingham area, as well as Shelby County and other parts of Alabama, in 2020. C Spire is a member of the Alabama Rural Broadband Coalition (ARBC), which is focused on rural broadband expansion. As part of the ARBC, C Spire also will be helping expand rural broadband access to Jasper, Alabama,[11] in 2020.

In January 2021, the company announced it would be investing US$1 billion over three years to deploy broadband internet to serve more than 200,000 homes and businesses in Mississippi and Alabama and support the expansion of 5G access.[12]

In July 2021, C Spire completed the acquisition of Harbor Communications. With this acquisition, the company is providing fiber-based broadband internet access and related services to several cities and towns in Mobile and Baldwin counties on Alabama's Gulf Coast. [13]

In October 2021, C Spire announced it will acquire Alabama-based telecommunications provider Troy Cablevision in a deal subject to regulatory approval. Troy Cablevision was founded in 1985 and offers cable, internet and other services to businesses and residents in Pike, Coffee, Crenshaw and Dale counties. It has offices in Troy, Elba, Enterprise, Luverne and Ozark.[14] The Troy Cable brand was changed to C Spire in 2022.

History[edit]

Cellular South, Inc. began its wireless service on the Mississippi Gulf Coast on February 4, 1988, using AMPS technology. Former football quarterback Archie Manning made the company's inaugural call from Gulfport, Mississippi to then U.S. Representative Trent Lott in Washington, D.C.[15]

In 2011, C Spire became the fourth wireless carrier in the U.S., behind AT&T, Sprint and Verizon and ahead of T-Mobile, to be able to sell the iPhone.[16]

In 2013, C Spire created Vu Digital, LLC as a wholly owned subsidiary.[17] The name "Vu" is pronounced "view" and is inspired by the phrase "your view of things".[17] Vu is used as a web content aggregator with heuristics, allowing it to improve its aggregation selections based on user preferences.[17] Its initial product was "a cloud-based digital profiling and analytics system" that provided "web personalization". Digital announced Video-To-Data analysis and metadata tagging in May 2015.[17][18] Vu Video-to-Data (V2D) translates video images and audio to text, affording video producers the ability to tag their content with metadata making it more searchable.[19][20]

Network[edit]

Radio frequency summary[edit]

Further information: LTE frequency bands and 5G NR frequency bands

The following is a list of known LTE and NR frequency bands which C Spire employs. 2G/3G CDMA was discontinued in 2022.[21]

Frequency range Band

number

Protocol Generation Status Notes
700 MHz Lower

A/B/C Blocks

12 LTE/LTE-A 4G Active Primary LTE coverage bands.
850 MHz CLR 5
1.7/2.1 GHz AWS 4 Additional LTE bands for capacity.
1.9 GHz PCS 2
600 MHz DD n71 NR 5G Active/Building Out Primary 5G coverage bands.
700 MHz Lower

A/B/C Blocks

n12
1.9 GHz PCS n2 Additional 5G band for capacity.
2.5 GHz BRS/EBS n41 Primary mid-band frequency.
3.7 GHz C-Band n77 Pending deployment Spectrum will be available for use starting in December 2023.[22]
28 GHz mmWave n261 Active/Building Out Primary mmWave frequency. Only available in select areas.

References[edit]

  1. ^ "Fictitious Business Name Registration" (PDF). Business.sos.state.ms.us. Retrieved 2012-10-24.[permanent dead link]
  2. ^ "C Spire prepping gigabit 'Fiber to the Home' service, asks where to put it".
  3. ^ "Telapex, Inc". Telapex.com. Retrieved 2012-10-25.
  4. ^ dynamics, MVNO (October 21, 2011). "C Spire to offer iPhone". MVNO Dynamics. Archived from the original on December 22, 2016. Retrieved December 22, 2016.
  5. ^ "AT&T to buy spectrum, 21,000 customers from C Spire's Corr subsidiary". FierceWireless. 2013-04-05. Retrieved 2015-08-07.
  6. ^ "CELLULAR SOUTH CHANGES NAME TO C SPIRE WIRELESS | C Spire Wireless". www.cspire.com. Retrieved 2024-07-09.
  7. ^ "C Spire Acquires TekLinks for Managed Cloud Business Services". 2018-06-26.
  8. ^ "C Spire Health".
  9. ^ "C Spire, University of Mississippi Medical Center debut new mobile health app".
  10. ^ "New partnerships bringing ultra-fast internet to Alabama". 4 December 2019.
  11. ^ "Alabama Rural Broadband Coalition, C Spire announce expansion in Jasper". 21 November 2019.
  12. ^ "C Spire to invest $1 billion in 5G, fiber broadband in Alabama, Mississippi". February 2021. Archived from the original on 2021-02-01.
  13. ^ "C Spire wraps integration of Harbor Communications".
  14. ^ "Mississippi-based C Spire buys Troy Cablevision". Archived from the original on 2021-10-20.
  15. ^ History/Timeline Archived December 25, 2010, at the Wayback Machine
  16. ^ "How the 8th-largest cell carrier beat T-Mobile to the iPhone | CNN Business". CNN. 4 November 2011.
  17. ^ a b c d McDill, Stephen (2013-08-02). "Ridgeland-based Vu Digital gives media content, websites a personal touch". Mississippi Business Journal. Archived from the original on 2015-11-18. Retrieved 2015-11-18.
  18. ^ Ha, Anthony (2015-05-04). "Vu Digital Translates Videos Into Structured Data". TechCrunch. Archived from the original on 2015-11-17. Retrieved 2015-11-18.
  19. ^ Chandler, Clay (2015-05-07). "Video-to-data technology will be 'transformative'". The Clarion-Ledger. Archived from the original on 2024-05-27. Retrieved 2016-02-02.
  20. ^ Winslow, George (2015-05-05). "Vu Digital Launches V2D". Broadcasting & Cable. Archived from the original on 2015-11-18. Retrieved 2015-11-18.
  21. ^ Spire, C. (October 11, 2021). "Upgrade Alert: 3G Network to Shut Down in 2022". blog.cspire.com. Retrieved 2022-09-04.
  22. ^ Dano, News Analysis Mike; Director, Editorial; 5G; Strategies 2/24/2021, Mobile. "Verizon, AT&T, T-Mobile: Here are the C-band auction results". Light Reading. Retrieved 2021-02-25.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)
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