Regional U.S. operator C Spire continues its fiber buildout in the South, having begun work this month in Hoover and Homewood, Alabama. The operator is investing $500 million of its own funding over a three-year period, its deployment driven by crowdsourcing and grassroots campaigns.
Ben Moncrief, C Spire’s EVP for Alabama markets, told Fierce C Spire encourages people to visit its website, where they can input their addresses and let the company know where they want fiber deployed. He added C Spire “absolutely” places emphasis on local community feedback.
“We want to build anywhere we’re wanted,” Moncrief said. “We look at those results weekly and generate something of a heat map to see where demand for fiber service is the greatest, and that’s how we prioritize where we’ll build.”
Moncrief offered the example of Greenwood, Mississippi, where fiber expansion happened primarily due to local efforts. Last year, Greenwood’s city leadership approached C Spire about deploying fiber in the area. The city then sought feedback from residents to determine how much fiber interest there was on the local level.
“After a six-month grassroots campaign led by local leaders [in Greenwood], it was clear that was the place where we could be successful,” said Moncrief. “And now we’re deploying and connecting customers there.”
C Spire in September began construction of six fiber neighborhoods in Greenwood with plans to expand further in the area. In a statement last June, Greenwood Mayor Carolyn McAdams, said, “we appreciate C Spire’s response to the groundswell of community support for this game-changing technology investment.”
Around the time C Spire started expanding in Greenwood, the operator began constructing a 243-mile fiber route, providing adjacent connection to its Mississippi and Alabama markets. The route is expected to be completed before the end of this year and become immediately available for use.
C Spire in December closed its purchase of Alabama broadband provider Troy Cablevision. Moncrief noted the acquisition was a big element of C Spire’s expansion, unlocking a new geographic area. C Spire is continuing to build hundreds of miles of fiber routes in Alabama, he said, and has several pending fiber builds in Mississippi.
To complete this work, Moncrief said C Spire intends to leverage various broadband grants available on the state and federal levels in addition to its private capital. But lack of availability of long-haul fiber is the biggest hurdle for rural deployment.
“It’s relatively easy to identify communities like Jasper, Alabama, that want fiber deployed; we can build a distribution network in the community,” he said. The city of Jasper was where C Spire launched its first Alabama fiber market in December 2020.
“The challenge is finding and building the long-haul lines necessary to get back to an internet B point in say, Atlanta, Chicago or Dallas,” said Moncrief.
Regarding supply chain concerns, Moncrief noted it’s a challenging environment for operators. Although the various federal broadband stimulus packages provide a good amount of funding for deployment, he said not a lot of those funds help supplement basic components, whether those are plastic connectors, conduits or the fiber itself.
“There’s a lot of capital chasing resources that are already scarce,” Moncrief said. “But as an established provider we’ve got a track record of serving customers and building actively, so we’re in a good position to take advantage of resources that are available.”
One way C Spire circumvented supply chain constraints was by leasing excess long-haul capacity from Alabama Power. That has helped bridge the fiber gap between metro hubs and smaller communities.
C Spire currently provides a minimum of one-gig for residential premises, Moncrief said they plan to offer a multi-gig service tier in the near future. He emphasized fiber enables economic growth that’s essential for all types of communities to thrive.
“C Spire really believes communities of all sizes, whether they are dense or rural, benefit from high capacity, low latency, highly reliable fiber broadband services,” he concluded.