For some it may be hard to stomach that the latest “statewide” 1gbps internet rollout is coming to Mississippi. For others, it may not seem that odd because Chattanooga, in neighboring Tennessee, was actually the first city in the United States to get 1gb fiber. Contrary to popular believe, Chattanooga actually rolled their 1gb ethernet out citywide to all residents and businesses a whole year before Google brought the pipe to Kansas City.
Now Mississippi based C-Spire Wireless is rolling out 1gb fiber to the entire state of Mississippi. They plan to roll it out in intervals and have decided to light up 9 cities in the state first, but they’ve put an interesting and fun spin on it.
So far Hattiesburg, Batesville, Clinton, Corinth, Horn Lake, McComb, Quitman, Ridgeland and Starkville are all in the running to get the 1gb service as early as the middle of next year. Those cities were chosen as part of C Spire’s “Get Fiber First Challenge”
“We spent a lot of hours and about a week’s time going over all of the applications,” C Spire spokesman Dave Miller said. “This isn’t just about making the Internet better — even though that’s certainly going to happen — it’s more about transforming neighborhoods and communities and having the other benefits associated with it.”
“This means the complete end of buffering,” said C Spire public relations representative Liz Whelan. “There will be no waiting for uploads or downloads — it’s instant access. Think about what has changed since the days of dial-up until now — that’s basically the leap that 1-Gig is from what you have now.”
“Our goal in all of this is to make it accessible to people,” Whelan said. “We want to bring this amazing technology to people, but if it’s not made affordable, then what’s the point? We want this to be at a price that’s accessible to anybody.”
With the cities now selected C Spire is moving to phase II of the Get Fiber First Challenge by having community leaders rally residents and business owners to pre-register for the 1gb internet service at levels that will qualify them to be the first for the C Spire installation.
As for price C Spire has priced their 1gbps internet services competitively with other markets. The Internet alone will cost $80 per month. If a customer bundles it with home phone service it will be $100 per month and to bundle internet with TV service it will be $140 per month. To combine all three services the bundle rate will be just $160 per month which is less than many people in the state already pay for the same bundles through the local cable company, and without the speed.
Source: Hattiesburg American
