In mid-2021, C-Spire began the process of installing high-speed fiber Internet to the Town of Sumrall, completing business installations and continuing to gauge interest for restidential service.
After the required threshold of that interest is reached, C-Spire officials began engineering, with installation completed within nine to 12 months. That work is currently underway, but not without some hiccups along the way.
Mayor Joel Lofton said there have been some boil-water issues – which have since been cancelled – and gas line breaches, which also have been cleared up.
“You dial 811 and you go out and mark the lines, and they’re doing the best they can, and I think the crews that bought the lines did the best they can,” he said. “But some of that 50 or 60-year, or older, infrastructure nobody even knows where it is; we don’t have maps.
“We haven’t had big problems in that section of town; it was actually last week when we had the overall outage, and that was a different crew that was running line, and I actually believe it was C-Spire. But they were in a different area of town; it wasn’t even under the contract with that – that was actually running fiber to the voting precinct when they hit that line, so it was not the crew that was doing the fiber-at-home work.”
On November 7, Lofton posted on Facebook that work had caused a breached water line in the town, which resulted in many homes with low or no pressure. That problem was solved over the course of several hours.
Please be patient as we work to improve our community,” Lofton posted. “Town crews, Centerpoint Energy, AT&T, (Mississippi) Power and C-Spire do their absolute best to mark all known utilities and avoid them when new utilities are being installed, however incidents do sometimes occur.
“The town will continue to do all we can to prevent incidents and if they do occur, will work expeditiously to correct the problems.
While Sumrall does have Internet providers that service some portions of town, there are some areas that currently can’t be reached by those providers.
“That leaves folks in a situation where they’re having to go with some of these satellite companies,” Lofton said. “There just aren’t good options, and it’s been especially problematic over the last year with lockdowns from COVID.
“There are so many people working from home, so many children trying to do their school work at home. Systems that were decent before, you have so many people having to be at home, they just can’t support all the kids that are trying to do school work and all the employees trying to log in to work from home. They’re not able to sustain it, so there is definitely a need here.”
Lofton said in addition to residents already living in Sumrall, high-speed Internet also is helpful to attract those individuals who may be looking to move to town.
“It’s a concern,” he said. “As residents move in, that’s one of the things that they need to know, is that they’ll be able to connect and communicate with online resources.
“If we don’t have this improvement, it could be a hindrance to our growth."
So far, Lofton has heard very positive comments from the two neigborhoods that have already been connected to the C-Spire service.
“It seems to be very good in those areas,” he said. “So I would expect the same positive impacts in (other areas).
“They have not given us a timeline; as a for-profit company, they schedule their work as to how it best impacts their bottom line. So as people continue to sign up for the service, and indicate in the online portal for C-Spire, I think that will speed the process.”
