C Spire

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

C Spire's corporate headquarters in Ridgeland, Mississippi
Trade name	C Spire
Company type	Subsidiary
Industry	Telecommunications
Founded	1988; 37 years ago (1988)
Founder	Wade 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)
Products	Wireless voice and data, fiber to the home, cloud services, managed IT services
Parent	Telapex, Inc.
Website	cspire.com

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

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 announced 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

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

Radio frequency summary

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.