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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
,
U.S.
Number of locations
72 stores, 2 call centers, 4 data centers, 6 sales offices
Area served
  • Wireless: Mississippi and 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 an American 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 since 1988. C Spire provides service in Mississippi, the Memphis Metropolitan Area, and parts of Alabama including Mobile and Baldwin County. C Spire sells devices as well as prepaid and postpaid plans.

C Spire Home Fiber, began Gigabit speed Fiber to the Home efforts in 2013, providing gigabit and multi-gigabit residential fiber internet access for consumers in Mississippi, Alabama and Tennessee.[2] C Spire operates over 20,000 route miles of buried fiber optic cable.

C Spire Business offers fiber-backed broadband, telephony and IT services.

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

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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 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 December 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 became a member of the Alabama Rural Broadband Coalition (ARBC), which is focused on rural broadband expansion. As part of the ARBC, C Spire helped expand rural broadband access to Jasper, Alabama,[11][12] 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.[13]

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.[14]

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.[15] The Troy Cable brand was changed to C Spire in 2022.

History

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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.[16]

In 2011, C Spire became the fourth wireless carrier in the U.S., behind AT&T, Sprint and Verizon, to be able to sell the iPhone.[17]

In 2013, C Spire created Vu Digital, LLC as a wholly owned subsidiary.[18] The name "Vu" is pronounced "view" and is inspired by the phrase "your view of things".[18] Vu is used as a web content aggregator with heuristics, allowing it to improve its aggregation selections based on user preferences.[18] 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.[18][19] 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.[20][21]

Network

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Radio frequency summary

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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.[22]

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.[23]
28 GHz mmWave n261 Active/Building Out Primary mmWave frequency. Only available in select areas.

References

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