C Spire has given the nine cities seeking to get first access to its Fiber to the Home web initiative an ultimatum: Either get residents signed up by the end of the year or the service will not come at all.
Sign-ups for the service have been under way for more than eight months.
McComb Mayor Whitney Rawlings announced last month that C Spire officials had given McComb, Batesville, Clinton, Corinth and Hattiesburg a Dec. 31 deadline to have at least two neighborhoods, which C Spire calls “fiberhoods,” become eligible for the 1-gigabit fiber Internet services.
“The city of McComb has this opportunity to have fiber to the home if our neighborhoods will respond,” Rawlings said. “We’ve got until Dec. 31 to have two fiberhoods go green, or the city will lose this opportunity.”
C Spire announced last year that it would spend approximately $100 million to lay fiber optic cables to nine cities across Mississippi in the first statewide rollout of such technology in the country. But if the nine original finalists do not have a targeted percentage of residents in at least two neighborhoods sign up by the end of the year, those cities will be removed from the program and other cities will have the opportunity to compete.
Some cities, such as Chattanooga, Tennessee, and Kansas City, Kansas, have been able to finance the projects on their own or won a similar contest with Google to have the high-speed service.
Rawlings said McComb should respond to this opportunity that only a handful of places have been given.
“Cities all across the country are trying to get this done, having to spend a lot of money to do it,” he said. “We don’t have to do that because C Spire is willing to do it for us.”
In order for a neighborhood to qualify, a designated percentage of the residents must pre-register for the services.
A $10 registration fee is required, and C Spire representatives have said the money will be refunded if the neighborhood fails to go green.
However, pre-registering does not tie residents into a C Spire contracts. If the neighborhood goes green and a resident decides they are no longer interested in the services, the registration fee will not be refunded, but no other penalties will be incurred.
Some residents and officials have asked about the possibility of the city financing the registration fees for each neighborhood, but C Spire representatives have discouraged this because the residents in the neighborhoods may never actually register for the services, and C Spire would have wasted millions laying cables no one intends to use.
One complaint from many residents is the increased monthly bill for C Spire in comparison to Cable One options, which is McComb’s most used cable Internet provider.
With Cable One, an Internet-only package averages $50, while C Spire’s is $80. To bundle cable, phone and Internet services, Cable One charges $99, while C Spire charges $160.
C Spire Wireless customers would also receive $10 off the monthly cost of any package.
Rawlings said he has found many private citizens who have taken an interest in the project, dubbing themselves Friends of Fiber. The volunteers have been campaigning across the city, especially the Reservation and Edgewood communities.
C Spire has divided McComb into six neighborhoods, and the Reservation is the closest to qualifying, with 30 of the required 45 percent of households registered.
Edgewood is in second place, but is significantly further behind, with only 8 of the required 35 percent required.
The States neighborhood is in third, with 6 of 35 percent, followed by East McComb with 5 of 45 percent, Algiers/Baertown with 2 of 45 percent and Burglund in last with only 1 of 35 percent required.
However, McComb is not the only city struggling to sign up residents.
Of the nine finalist cities, only four have any neighborhoods that have gone green: Quitman did first, with only one neighborhood encompassing the entire town, followed by Starkville and Ridgeland, which each have three qualified fiberhoods.
Horn Lake also has one qualified fiberhood.
Clinton has 18 fiberhoods, Hattiesburg has 13, Batesville has five and Corinth has three.
All of their percentages are low, and McComb’s Reservation neighborhood is the closest to completion out of all five cities.
Rawlings said he believes this will be a benefit not only for the neighborhoods but the entire city.
The mayor sees it as a rare opportunity, and he said businesses would be more interested in locating in the city and people would have more interest in moving to McComb.
“It would be a significant benefit to our city if we had this opportunity. All of this ties into the quality of life we’re trying to improve in McComb to attract people back into our city,” Rawlings said. “It concerns me that in 2000, the population in the city was 13,500, and 10 years later, it’s 12,800. In 2020, that number can’t be 12,000 — it has to be growing.
“We’ve got to reverse that trend. If we bring this technology into our city, that’s a plus.”
For more information or to pre-register for C Spire’s Fiber to the Home program, visit cspire.com/McComb. The $10 fee is refundable if the neighborhood does not go green by Dec. 31.
