A firm focus on the future is endemic to the culture of every successful technology company. At
C Spire, we don’t spend much time reflecting on the past. Ask any of my 1,900 coworkers, and
they’ll likely tell you some version of the same thing.
As we approached our latest milestone anniversary, though, I began to reflect on the truly wild
ride of the past 35 years—beginning in 1988 as Cellular South, when we were the first company
to offer wireless on the Mississippi Gulf Coast, and since 2011 as C Spire, when our name was
changed to reflect who we are and what we strive to be—Customer inspired, writes HU MEENA.
We’re a Mississippi-based company founded, led and driven by Mississippians, competing
shoulder-to-shoulder against multinational corporations that answer to shareholders, not their
employees or customers. At C Spire, we are indeed inspired by our customers. We are driven by
the dedicated people who lay fiber to your home, maintain networks, answer the line when you
call and proficiently execute in a wide variety of technology-based disciplines. They’re your
neighbors, friends and family members, and they’re invested in you. To say we have skin in the
game is an understatement.
Together, we are the largest privately owned wireless company in the country, and the sixth
largest overall. Customers across Mississippi rely on our LTE and 5G wireless network every day.
Our Gigabit fiber keeps homes and businesses speeding ahead with internet at the speed of
light, enabling homes to become smarter and more entertaining.
Every step of the way, our team’s determination and accomplishments have added to the
foundation that allows us to invest back into our communities. We have accelerated our course
through a planned three-year, US$1 billion investment in fiber infrastructure and network
enhancements we began in 2021. We are bringing broadband internet to a growing number of
cities and rural areas of Mississippi, Alabama and Tennessee. And at the end of every fiber line
and 5G connection is a real person or family, a new business getting off the ground, and
innovators turning their ingenuity into the communities and economies of the future.
We believe it is incumbent upon the leaders of today to create that future for the next
generation. Nearly 90 per cent of students attending public schools in Mississippi have access to
issued laptops or tablets, creating a huge demand for network resources. That’s why our
engineers are using artificial intelligence to identify network usage increases at cell sites near
school campuses around the state and redistribute traffic where it’s needed most, at a
moment’s notice.
We maintain the vital Mississippi Optical Network, also known as the MissiON network, to
support research and education at every public university and community college in the state,
and to facilitate collaboration among educators and students at these institutions. This network
also supported distance learning for more than 200,000 students in the community college
system during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Through our Tech Movement initiative, we host our annual C3 Coding Challenge and support
Base Camp Academy, both of which immerse students in the world of coding languages and
prepare them for the jobs of tomorrow. In 2021, we supported legislation to make computer
science part of the curriculum in every K-12 public and charter school in the state by 2024 and
donated US$1 million toward training teachers for the task.
The aggressiveness of our leadership made us among the first carriers in the US to offer the
iPhone 4 to customers over a decade ago. In 2013, when only four cities in the US had Gigabit
fiber internet available to homes, we started an ambitious fiber-to-the-home initiative that
carries ultra-fast internet to homes and businesses now available in more than 100
communities. We plan to double that number across Mississippi, Alabama and Tennessee by
2025.
In our shared future, we envision networks with zero downtime and seamless app integrations
that intuitively connect any space. Automated systems with machine learning that find and fix
issues before there’s a problem. Biometric and AI applications that help us think one step
ahead. And, of course, the wireless and fiber networks to make it all hum.
If past is prelude, together we have an exceedingly bright future. Forward thinking—it’s one
way we stay customer inspired.
Meena is President and CEO of C Spire in Ridgeland, Miss.
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