C Spire announced in early November it has officially opened its new Mississippi data center. The $23 million facility is part of the company's efforts to offer more enterprise services.
The Mississippi data center is located on 6.5 acres within the Thad Cochran Research, Technology and Economic Development Park and offers 23,800 square feet of available space. The facility received a Tier 3 certification from the Uptime Institute and provides direct access to C Spire's ring-protected fiber network. Many top-tier data centers are wholly owned by private businesses or government agencies and are only available for internal operations. C Spire's facility offers commercial space for enterprises and governments alike.
The site is particularly desirable because it is outside of the typical path of severe weather like hurricanes and tornadoes and is the only data center with its capabilities within a 250 mile radius. The company has said that there are only 15 other sites in the country with offerings equivalent to the new Mississippi data center.
The city of Starkville, where the facility is located, and Oktibbeha County have offered C Spire data center tax incentives for the new facility, including waiving property taxes on the site for the next 10 years.
C Spire currently operates two other Mississippi data centers, one located in Jackson and another in Ridegeland.
C Spire also recently activated its Fiber to Home network within the new Starkville data center, providing customers with 1 gigabit per second broadband access. The company said that the speeds offered through the service are 100 times faster than the national average. C Spire believes enhanced broadband access will encourage new investment and expansion opportunities and increase the business technology infrastructure in the region.
