Starkville, Miss. (April 30, 2019) – Parts of Oktibbeha County near Starkville, one of the first Mississippi cities five years ago to receive next-generation broadband services, will soon be home to C Spire’s residential fiber program, including Gigabit speed internet access, award-winning live streaming TV and premium digital home phone.
C Spire Home Services, the unit that manages the company’s residential fiber program, has either installed or is planning to soon install the infrastructure in more than 800 homes in the unincorporated area in all directions around Starkville, home to Mississippi State University and the 15th largest city in the state.
Neighborhoods and areas where residential fiber is being installed or is planned for installation soon include Steele Plantation, Quail Valley, Heritage Colony, Grand Oaks, Sunnyland, Stillwood, Self Creek, which includes homes off Self Creek Road and along Prisock Road and in The Willows and Oktibbeha County Lake, which includes homes in Bulldog Cove and along Riviera Road, Buntin Drive and Sherry Lane.
“Residential fiber is a game-changer and this revolutionary technology promises to boost home values, broaden entertainment opportunities, help expand the local economy and improve the quality of life for everyone in Oktibbeha County,” said Ashley Phillips, general manager of C Spire Home Services.
The first customers to receive the services not only will experience a quantum leap in broadband internet speeds and capacity, but also get access to digital home phone service and the nation’s first app-based, live streaming digital commercial TV service honored by the cable TV industry in 2017 as the best television technology product in the U.S.
C Spire TV delivers advanced cable TV features that consumers love in convenient and simple apps that are designed to run on popular streaming devices, such as Amazon Fire TV, Android TV, Apple TV and Roku TV – eliminating the need to outfit every TV in the home with a set top box and saving several hundred dollars a year in rental fees.
Selected areas in the county have been divided into six fiberhoods covering more than 800 homes. Phillips said the company is turning up service first for those homeowners who pre-ordered the service with installations and service activations for new customers planned over the next several weeks.
The Oktibbeha County residential fiber program is leveraging new additions along Poor House Road, South Montgomery, Atkinson Drive and South Ridge Road to C Spire’s over 9,000 route miles of backbone fiber optic infrastructure that spans the state. “Our services are future-proofed with the incredible capacity that this technology supports,” Phillips said.
Oktibbeha County Supervisor Bricklee Miller, who represents the area, said she expects the 21st century technology to transform the way homeowners live, work and play while boosting education, job opportunities and economic development. “Great internet access is critical to our success and I appreciate C Spire’s continuing efforts to make it a reality here.”
Marc McGee, director of Mississippi State’s Research and Technology Corporation and a member of the Oktibbeha County Economic Development Authority, said fast, reliable internet is central to communications and business. “This will definitely make it easy for workers to telecommute and attractive for businesses to relocate to our region,” he said.
Miller said she expects the fiber optic infrastructure to increase home values as more consumers subscribe to the suite of services and potentially lure new high-tech business investment to the county. “We see a bright future and many opportunities to leverage this infrastructure,” she said.
Recent nationwide studies have concluded that Gigabit speed fiber-optic connections like those provided by C Spire Home Services can add $5,437 (3.1 percent) to the price of a $175,000 home – about as much as a fireplace, or half the value of a bathroom.
With the addition of Oktibbeha County, C Spire has rolled out ultra-fast Gigabit internet access and related services in 15 Mississippi markets, boosting overall broadband connection speeds in the state by 200 percent since 2014. The suite of services is competitively priced and is expected to pave the way for a boom in smart home applications and innovation.
Residential fiber is part of the C Spire Tech Movement initiative, which is committed to moving communities forward through technology with a focus on broadband access, workforce development and innovation.
To learn more about C Spire Fiber service and pricing or find out if your home is in an area with this next-generation technology infrastructure, visit www.cspire.com/fiber. To learn more about the C Spire Tech Movement, visit www.cspire.com/techmvmt.
About C Spire
C Spire is a diversified telecommunications and technology services company that provides world-class, customer-inspired wireless communications, 1 Gigabit consumer Internet access as well as a full suite of dedicated Internet, wireless, IP Voice, data and cloud services for businesses. This news release and other announcements are available at www.cspire.com/news. For more information about C Spire, visit www.cspire.com or follow us on Facebook at www.facebook.com/cspire or Twitter at www.twitter.com/cspire.