C Spire
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| File:C Spire Wireless.png | |
| C Spire | |
| Company type | Subsidiary |
| Industry | Telecommunications |
| Founded | 1988 |
| Founder | Wade H. Creekmore, Jr. and James H. "Jimmy" Creekmore, Sr. |
| Headquarters | , |
Number of locations | 72 stores, 2 call centers |
Area served | Memphis metropolitan area Mississippi Alabama Florida Panhandle |
Key people | Hu Meena – President |
| Products | Wireless voice and data, Fiber to the Home, Cloud Services, |
| Parent | Telapex, Inc. |
| Website | www.cspire.com |
Cellular South Inc. d.b.a. C Spire[1] headquartered in Ridgeland, Mississippi, is the sixth largest wireless provider in the United States and the largest privately held wireless provider in the United States.[2] The company is a full-service provider of transport, Internet and telecom services. C Spire has approximately 1,200,000 customers in Mississippi, the Memphis Metropolitan Area, the Florida Panhandle, parts of Alabama including Mobile. The company also holds 700 MHz and AWS licenses covering most of Tennessee and Alabama, though it has not yet extended service to these areas. On September 20, 2011 Cellular South, Inc. filed a trademark application for the C Spire Wireless name and two days later announced that it would market its services under the C Spire Wireless brand effective September 26.[3] C Spire Wireless is owned by the holding company Telapex, Inc.,[4] which also owns Telepak Networks, Inc., and several smaller Mississippi telecoms.
History
Cellular South, Inc. began its wireless service on the Mississippi Gulf Coast on February 4, 1988, using AMPS technology. Former football quarterback Archie Manning made the company’s inaugural call from Gulfport, Mississippi to then U.S. Representative Trent Lott in Washington, D.C.[5]
C Spire created Vu Digital, LLC as a wholly owned subsidiary in 2013.[6] The name "Vu" is pronounced "view" and is inspired by the phrase "your view of things".[6] Founded by Wade Smith, Vu is used as a web content aggregator with heuristics, allowing it to improve its aggregation selections based on user preferences.[6] Its initial product was "a cloud-based digital profiling and analytics system" that provided "web personalization". Digital announced Video-To-Data analysis and metadata tagging in May 2015.[6][7] Vu Video-to-Data (V2D) translates video images and audio to text, affording video producers the ability to tag their content with metadata making it more searchable.[8][9]
Growth
Since 1999, C Spire has invested more than US$700 million in its wireless network, including constructing 1,403 cell sites, a high-speed wireless broadband network and a permanent microwave ring for redundancy across the Gulf Coast region.[10] In 2009, the company purchased Alabama-based Corr Wireless, which expanded its coverage in Alabama and moved it into Georgia for the first time (in 2013 Corr Wireless was subsequently sold to AT&T[11]). In 2006 the firm opened its first sales center outside of its native network footprint.[12]
The company announced on September 22, 2011 it planned on rebranding to C Spire Wireless effective on September 26.
References
- ^ "Fictitious Business Name Registration" (PDF). Business.sos.state.ms.us. Retrieved 2012-10-24.
- ^ [1][dead link]
- ^ "Trademark information for C SPIRE WIRELESS from USPTO - by Markify". Trademark.markify.com. 2011-09-20. Retrieved 2012-10-25.
- ^ "Telapex, Inc". Telapex.com. Retrieved 2012-10-25.
- ^ History/Timeline Template:Wayback
- ^ a b c d McDill, Stephen (2013-08-02). "Ridgeland-based Vu Digital gives media content, websites a personal touch". Mississippi Business Journal. Archived from the original on 2015-11-18. Retrieved 2015-11-18.
- ^ Ha, Anthony (2015-05-04). "Vu Digital Translates Videos Into Structured Data". TechCrunch. Archived from the original on 2015-11-18. Retrieved 2015-11-18.
- ^ Chandler, Clay (2015-05-07). "Video-to-data technology will be 'transformative'". The Clarion-Ledger. Archived from the original on 2016-02-02. Retrieved 2016-02-02.
- ^ Winslow, George (2015-05-05). "Vu Digital Launches V2D". Broadcasting & Cable. Archived from the original on 2015-11-18. Retrieved 2015-11-18.
- ^ "View Article". Technologyalliance.ms. Retrieved 2012-10-25.
- ^ "AT&T to buy spectrum, 21,000 customers from C Spire's Corr subsidiary". FierceWireless. 2013-04-05. Retrieved 2015-08-07.
- ^ [2][dead link]