On pages one and three in this section you will find a story about Batesville’s next step in this quest for ultra high speed fiber optic Internet.

This is about generating business, generating revenue, of course. As a media provider, C Spire has pitted different towns and neighborhoods against each other, challenging each to become first to receive the 1 Gbps Internet speed. The more people who sign up for it, the more revenue C Spire will potentially generate.

So why then, have the city, the Panola Partnership, this newspaper and other entities united in pursuit of this goal of Fiber First when it endorses the commercial construction venture for a private company?

Because it is so innovative, that’s why.

Right now in the U.S. you can count the number of cities with ultra-high speed fiber optic Internet service on your fingers. And all are in upscale metropolitan areas.

So here comes C Spire with this outlandish plan to put fiber optic service to residences in a small town, not just one small town, but statewide — all over Mississippi. The ongoing competition has been C Spire’s way of stimulating interest statewide — creating a buzz commensurate with size and scope of their project. When C Spire announced its Fiber to the Home project in September, an interesting analogy was mentioned. Placing 1Gbps Internet speed into homes would bring about as revolutionary a change as had the TVA rural electrification of the 1930s.

Really? How so?

When you think that it has only been for the last 100 or so years that homes in Batesville and Sardis have had electric power. The first residential electricity available in Panola’s county seats came from the generator at the old Carrier Lumber Mill south of Sardis. When lines were extended to the towns, people got electric lights — just lights. Look around you now, and almost everything we touch during every hour of the day is powered by electricity.

C Spire visionaries see almost the same revolutionary potential when ultra high speed Internet is placed into our hands. There will be the entertainment and phone options that we are familiar with today, but the access to such Internet speed will spin off into so many innovations that most of us cannot yet imagine its potential.

That’s why city officials and economic development representatives have wholeheartedly endorsed the C Spire Fiber to the Home initiative.

The next step is to go to the web site and pre-register with C Spire. It cost $10 and it’s refundable. See how your neighborhood stacks up against others in Batesville and the other eight cities.
Visit <http://www.cspire.com/fiberhome/>