Through Public-Private Partnerships, C Spire Connects Mississippi

Cspire has successfully used U.S. Treasury ARPA funds to deliver fiber to previously unserved households and communities throughout Mississippi. (Source: CSpire)

Starting out as a local phone company in Meadville, Mississippi, CSpire has built a regional footprint across the South to include parts of Alabama, the Florida panhandle, and Tennessee. But as Dorothy said in the Wizard of Oz, there’s no place like home.

“We own and operate more than 23,000 fiber miles across our footprint,” said Matt Peaster, Executive Vice President of Fiber at C Spire. “About 12,000 of those are in Mississippi, with 217,900 Mississippi homes passed in total, and growing every day.”

C Spire has invested heavily in fiber since the pandemic to reach unserved and underserved residences and communities in its home state, with success driven by working with the state to utilize the U.S. Department of Treasury’s Capital Projects Fund.

“These grant projects are a success story for public-private partnerships in the fiber infrastructure space,” said Peaster. “The [Mississippi] state broadband office was really supportive, and we ended up deploying in 12 counties across the state, going from the northernmost counties in the state, which are DeSoto and Tate counties, down to the southernmost counties in the state, and some counties in between.”

C Spire was able to leverage its existing statewide fiber broadband infrastructure to deploy modern fiber into communities that had legacy DSL, satellite, and cable services as their only options, in some cases building out entire towns that had a great need for improved services to support schools, public safety, health care, and local businesses.

“We’ve been really excited about the success of the program. We’ve gotten a great response in the form of penetration rates, and we think we’ve really accomplished what our mission is, to improve lives through technology,” said Peaster. “We’ve given businesses the opportunity to grow and compete. We’ve given residents the opportunity to stay where they are and to build communities around them.”

C Spire typically expects over 40% fiber take rates across multiple years, but previously underserved Mississippi communities are reaching 40% take rates in less than a year, demonstrating the pent-up need for reliable high-speed broadband. To reach some of these communities, the company has put up anywhere from 30% to 60% of the build cost matching dollars, with Peaster noting that the company had put together a plan to put fiber out into those areas as fast as possible.

“We’re heavily invested in these communities to begin with, but the Capital Projects Funds gave us the opportunity to get out and reach areas of the state that we otherwise could have never made a business case for,” said Peaster. “It’s been a really successful program, and the communities have shown their support in taking our service.”

To facilitate faster deployments, C Spire worked closely with local municipalities to build relationships with them. making sure they executed on their promises to earn their trust. In one instance, C Spire wanted to build out every location in a town in one year, but the local government didn’t have the ability to keep up with locates. The two met multiple times to work out a plan that would meet both sides’ needs, with C Spire offering to help increase locate resources.

“That relationship building and earning credibility with communities is what allowed us to deploy at the rate and speed at which we did. Every time we deploy a community, we’re laser focused on leaving it as good as it was before we got there,” said Peaster. “We’re going to come back, make sure the sod is replaced, make sure that everything looks as good or better than it did when we first arrived.”

This article and similar stories can be found in the Q3 edition of the Fiber Forward Magazine.