Diamondhead first Mississippi Gulf Coast city to receive C Spire's residential fiber services, including Gigabit speed internet access, award-winning live streaming TV and digital home phone

DIAMONDHEAD, Miss., May 1, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- Diamondhead, one of Mississippi's premiere resort communities, has become the first city on the Gulf Coast to receive C Spire's next-generation residential Fiber-to-the-Home (FTTH) services, including up to 1,000 Mbps 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 finished testing and begun turning up service this week for the first customers to receive the 21^st century technology that will transform the way homeowners live, work and play in the 8,071-population city located 50 miles northeast of New Orleans in Hancock County.

"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 Diamondhead," 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.

And, thanks to a C Spire petition approved by the FCC in late April, residents will have access to Mississippi TV stations as their primary channels for local news, sports and weather instead of neighboring stations in New Orleans.  Hancock County, although geographically closer to Mississippi coastal cities, is considered an "orphan" member of the Louisiana market.

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 and Apple 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.

The 11.7 square miles in the city have been divided into 12 fiberhoods covering over 3,500 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 Diamondhead residential fiber program is leveraging new segment additions in South Mississippi and along the Gulf Coast to C Spire's over 9,000 route miles of backbone fiber optic infrastructure that spans much of the Magnolia state.  "These services are future-proofed with the incredible capacity that this technology supports," Phillips said.

"Our city is the first on the Gulf Coast to get access to this game-changing technology," said Diamondhead Mayor Tommy Schafer.  "Now our home owners will have advanced services that improve their quality of life and our businesses will have the tools they need to expand our economy."

Hancock County is one of the state's fastest growing areas and C Spire's residential fiber program should help attract new investment and growth in the region, according to Board of Supervisors President Blaine LaFontaine. "Fiber-based, ultra-fast broadband services are still a nascent technology in the U.S. - so Diamondhead is certainly on the cutting edge."

Tish Haas Williams, executive director of the Hancock County Chamber of Commerce, 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."

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 Diamondhead, C Spire has rolled out ultra-fast Gigabit internet access and related services in 14 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.

SOURCE C Spire

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