C Spire Boosts Mobile Broadband Speeds, Capacity in Nine East Mississippi Counties

Firm adds critical wireless spectrum, carriers to 64 cell sites to improve customer network experience

Ridgeland, Miss. (November 20, 2019) – Consumers and businesses in targeted parts of C Spire’s wireless service area in East Mississippi are experiencing faster speeds and better connections with the completion of a 10-month project to deploy more spectrum and add capacity to the network.

The multi-million-dollar project, which started in February and is virtually complete this month, targeted 64 cell sites in nine East Mississippi counties and 252 cell sites in 41 counties statewide for the enhancements, which have improved capacity and speeds for thousands of customers as a result of the additional spectrum and carriers.

C Spire, a Mississippi-based telecommunications and technology services company, operates the nation’s largest privately-owned mobile services firm. The targeted program is part of the firm’s broader efforts to strengthen its core network and prepare for the next generation of cellular technology.

The spectrum project comes on the heels of a separate, massive company effort to install new base stations and software at all of its 1,200-plus cell sites that will serve as the foundation for C Spire’s transition to 5G, which promises to radically alter how consumers live, work and play and how businesses thrive in the new 21st century digital economy.

“As a customer-inspired company, we are constantly fine tuning our network to ensure adequate capacity, performance and speeds so that consumers and businesses in East Mississippi and across our region can rely on us for all of their personal and professional mobile voice and data needs,” said Brian Caraway, general manager of C Spire’s wireless unit.

Caraway said the company has used some of its supply of low and mid-band spectrum and added capacity and carriers where needed to improve speeds and connections. “We have added carriers at these sites that, in many cases, have doubled capacity and tripled speeds – depending on the need,” he noted.

Much of the work in East Mississippi has improved the performance of 64 cell sites, including:

• Six Choctaw County cell sites where doubling low-band spectrum and increasing mid-band spectrum resulted in dramatic speed and capacity improvements, particularly in Mathiston and Ackerman.
• Six Clay County cell sites where low-band spectrum capacity was doubled or tripled and a 50 percent increase in mid-spectrum bandwidth, resulting in capacity and speed improvements, particularly in the community of Griffith
• Nine Lauderdale County cell sites where mid-band spectrum carrier additions have increased capacity by 50 percent and improved data speeds in the city of Meridian
• 14 Lowndes County cell sites where doubling low-band spectrum and increasing mid-band spectrum by 50 percent has improved capacity and speeds, particularly data speeds in the city of Columbus
• Four Noxubee County cell sites where doubling low-band spectrum and using mid-band spectrum for capacity offload will improve overall capacity and speed, particularly in the town of Macon, which has five times more bandwidth and a data speed boost.
• Six Oktibbeha County cell sites where doubling low-band spectrum and boosting mid-band spectrum by 50 percent have improved overall capacity and speeds in the area.
• Five Webster County cell sites where doubling low-band spectrum and boosting mid-band spectrum by 50 percent have improved overall capacity and speeds in the area.
• Twelve Winston County cell sites where doubling low-band spectrum and adding 15 MHz of mid-band spectrum have dramatically improved peak data speeds across the county.
• Two Smith County cell sites where adding 50 percent more mid-band spectrum capacity has improved data speeds in Taylorsville and New Haven.

“We’re using carrier aggregation technology, which brings together spectrum from multiple frequency bands for improved speed and spectral efficiency, and other software and hardware improvements to achieve better speeds and pave the way for Voice over LTE or high-definition mobile voice service coming soon,” said Alan Jones, senior vice president of Access and Deployment for C Spire.

The pre-5G project features new base stations and radios that are adaptable, powerful and able to meet C Spire’s future needs for a next generation cellular network, software-defined services and the Internet of Things. “Not only does this new technology deliver high quality connectivity and coverage, but it helps us quickly evolve to meet customer expectations,” Jones said.

To learn more about the C Spire network enhancements, visitwww.cspire.com/cms/wireless/enhanced-network-speeds/.

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 www.facebook.com/cspire">about C Spire, visit www.cspire.com or follow us on Facebook at www.facebook.com/cspire or Twitter at www.twitter.com/cspire.