- C Spire launched The One Plan, combining wireless and home fiber in a single converged offer
- The One Plan includes unlimited wireless, fiber internet and a five-year price lock guarantee, with no hotspot restrictions
- Existing customers get the same benefits as new ones
C Spire is tapping its Blue Shoe Crew to promote The One Plan, a converged mobile phone and home fiber internet offer that makes its debut today.
The One Plan is available to both new and existing customers starting at $99 per month. The plan includes unlimited wireless and fiber internet with a five-year price lock guarantee and no hotspot restrictions.
C Spire President and CEO Suzy Hays said The One Plan is the first truly converged wireless and fiber service designed around the customer rather than the company.
She also noted that the name “C Spire” refers to “customer inspired,” and that’s very much at the heart of this new One Plan.
“It’s pretty different from anything in the market,” she told Fierce. “We were very intentional about making sure there weren't any surprises. We tried to be very transparent and build it in such a way that would be customer inspired and true to who we are.”
Blue Shoe Crew goes public
When the company introduced its Fiber to the Home plan, it got an overwhelmingly positive response to how its install crews approach customers. The installers don’t require customers to wait during a window of time for them to show up. Customers choose the time and the blue-dressed crew shows up - and on time, she said.
With The One Plan, C Spire is taking the Blue Shoe Crew to a new level, saying it’s the personification of what C Spire calls its One Team mentality. Executive leaders, back-office teams, retail associates, installers and technicians all wear the same shoes. In other words, it’s not one person’s job to make sure things go right for the customer – it’s everyone’s jobs.
“It’s about the front line, but it's also about everyone on the back end that's working to make it easy for our front lines to deliver great service,” Hays said. “Then it’s also the ongoing experience with our network. It's really the entire company coming together and working towards that experience.”
C Spire's Mississippi roots
C Spire, based in Ridgeland, Mississippi, is a privately held regional carrier with about 1 million customers. Its serves customers in Mississippi and parts of Alabama and Tennessee with its own network and via roaming agreements beyond that.
In wireless, C Spire’s rivals include the usual – AT&T, T-Mobile and Verizon – but AT&T and C Spire are the leaders in its markets, Hays said. On the fiber side, competitors include AT&T, Comcast and to a lesser extent, Brightspeed.
C Spire currently passes about 497,000 homes and businesses with fiber. Its model requires it to be first with fiber in its markets and the only time it’ll be second is if it’s entering a market where it doesn’t consider the competitor to be very strong, she said. It also uses fixed wireless access (FWA) to provide broadband service where it has adequate wireless capacity.
Survey supports one plan
The operator is launching The One Plan as convergence remains a prominent theme across the broader industry, particularly at AT&T.
A survey conducted across C Spire’s service area found about 60% of consumers believe it’s important to have one technology partner for both wireless mobile phone and home internet services.
Historically, there have been times when the wireless industry experienced significant shifts and this feels like one of those times, Hays said.
Consumers for some time have been able to go into C Spire wireless retail stores and buy a fiber internet service for their home, but from now on, it’ll be much easier to do that, both in stores and online.
Going forward, “I think this is how consumers will buy connectivity,” she said.