Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...

In 2021, C Spire acquired Troy Cablevision, Inc., and on Tuesday, the rebranding of Troy Cable over to C Spire was completed.

While there are still some buildings that have yet to have new signs installed, all offices, properties, vehicles, equipment and uniforms will carry the C Spire branding.

“The Troy Cable brand has been there in that area for a long, long time,” C Spire Vice President in Corporate Communications and Marketing Operations Jim Richmond said. “(Troy Cable) had grown quite a bit and were doing a terrific job, so they became an acquisition opportunity for us.”

C Spire, formerly known as Cellular South, is a privately owned telecommunications company based out of Ridgeland, Miss. Troy Cable was founded in 1985 and has provided cable, internet and phone services for Pike, Coffee, Crenshaw and Dale Counties ever since.

“Our roots in the telecom business goes back to the late 1940s,” Richmond said of C Spire. “So, it’s not like we just started yesterday. We’ve been around for quite some time.”

The similarities in the culture of both Troy Cable and C Spire are what made C Spire truly attractive as a buyer.

“When we looked at the process (of selling) at Troy Cable, we had several candidates when I was looking at putting it together for the shareholders,” former Troy Cable Chief Financial Officer Jake Cowen said. “I was thinking, ‘I sure hope C Spire wins this thing.’ They seemed like a good fit culture-wise. They’re not private equity guys from far off that will come in and take all the money out either.

“They’re family-run shareholders like Troy (Cable) was. We had that same culture of customer first. Our customers are what drove us. That all kind of fit with our workforce and our work ethic at both companies.”

C Spire concentrates on three lines of business: wireless communications, a businesses division that has customers in 35 states across the country and a home fiber optics division. C Spire has been expanding its fiber infrastructure and network development, especially in Alabama, over the past three years. C Spire pledged to invest $500 million into this expansion and is a part of a $1 billion total investment by the company across Alabama and Mississippi. Those types of investments are what made C Spire an attractive buyer in the first place.

“One thing that C Spire brought to the table is those capital investments,” Cowen said. “We weren’t taking on a lot of debt at Troy (Cable). We were still building out but we were doing that out of internal cash flow. With C Spire being much larger of a company there was more cash flow and this area was getting a lot of investment from corporate shareholders to invest in the Alabama market.”

Richmond said that providing that type of capital investment is exactly what C Spire wanted to do with acquiring Troy Cable.

“We’ve been able to come in and take what they had built and build off of that success and put more capital investment into the Wiregrass region,” Richmond said. “It’s more than just Troy, it’s a big part of what we’re doing in Alabama now. We have a lot of growth.

“Troy was doing a great, great job and it wasn’t like we bought Troy (Cable) and wanted to come in and clean house and make all these changes. They were doing a great job and we basically came in and brought in additional capital to continue to expand fiber and bring more growth and products and services to businesses and customers. It’s been a great fit for us.”

Richmond said that it was important to that the only changes felt by customers were the rebranding over to C Spire. With that, C Spire brought over Troy Cable’s employees, as well. Cowen now serves as senior vice president and general manager of C Spire, heading up the entire fiber division.

“The name on the bill will change and the name on our shirts will change but you should still expect that same great customer service you’re used to, if not even on a higher level,” Cowen said. “One of our main goals at C Spire is operational excellence and customer experience. We try to check all of those boxes all of the time. You’ll see our trucks and shirts change – we’re going to a different color blue – but we’ll continue to invest and harden some of our sites and add more redundancy and support.”

That redundancy paid off recently.

“In the past when we had a big storm, we could rely on our people from Troy and some from Union Springs but after a big storm you could have a lot of customers down,” said Cowen. “Like this big storm we had recently, we had teams from Mississippi help us and Troy is now backing them up, too. That’s greater resources to respond if we do have some kind of natural disaster and that benefits us all.”

Cowen said it also expands the services that customers in the Wiregrass would be able to benefit from. Along with the continued expansion of fiber Internet throughout the area, businesses have more options, as well.

“What it means for this area is that we can offer a whole host of solutions to the business community,” he said. “You have cyber threats now and we can handle that for you. We manage cloud services. If you want us to put your data in the cloud and handle that for you, we can. If you want us to get you to another partner – we partner with all the big guys – or we have our own internal cloud.

“If you want your own server, we can handle that for you now. We can sell you the servers and firewalls and anything you need to run your business. We have that as a solution or service now. That’s something that Troy didn’t have the scale or scope to do before and it really elevates what we do here.”

Richmond emphasized that C Spire plans to continue the community involvement that Troy Cable had been known for, as well.

“Troy (Cable) did a lot in the community in that area and C Spire is definitely planning to continue that and continue giving back to the communities in which it serves,” he said. “We recently did the Charles Henderson Football (Spring) Jamboree, which is something that Troy (Cable) had been doing for several years. We’re very involved in the chambers and economic development. That’s a big part of what we do and that’s why it’s a great fit with Troy.”