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C Spire Helps Victims of Mississippi Tornadoes With Text-to-Donate Mobile Giving Program

2014-04-29

Wireless Customers Can Easily Donate $10 To Aid American Red Cross Relief Efforts

Ridgeland, Miss., (April 29, 2014) – C Spire is making it easy to help victims of a series of deadly tornadoes that roared through central and north Mississippi on Monday with the launch today of a mobile giving program.

Customers can use their mobile phones to make a $10 donation that will aid American Red Cross relief efforts in the aftermath of at least 12 powerful twisters that caused over $100 million in property damage and losses to an estimated 945 homes and 100 businesses in 23 counties, killed at least 12 persons, leveled thousands of trees and caused widespread flash flooding, according to state emergency response officials.

All of the funds donated will be passed directly to the American Red Cross to provide shelter, food, counseling and other assistance to victims and communities affected by the twisters. To donate $10 to Red Cross relief efforts, customers can type the word “REDCROSS” and send it to 90999 via text message from their mobile device.

A confirmation text response will be sent to each customer to confirm the donation. All donations will appear as a line item on the customer’s bill.

Despite heavy voice and data volumes and the loss of commercial power in several areas immediately before and after the storms, C Spire’s advanced 3G and 4G LTE mobile broadband communications network continues to perform with minimal impacts, according to Eric Hollingsworth, vice president of Network Operations.

Hollingsworth said that call volumes and data traffic have been higher than normal, but the network performed well with only a handful of its cell sites affected by the storms with very few customer impacting issues. Several cell sites in Lee, Winston and Oktibbeha counties were on back up batteries or emergency generators due to loss of commercial power.

“Our thoughts and prayers go out to all of the individuals, families and communities that are dealing with the immediate aftermath of these destructive and deadly tornadoes,” said Jim Richmond, vice president of Corporate Communications for C Spire. “We’re committed to using wireless technology to keep customers connected in times like these and to make it easy to support victims of these storms.”

Richmond said C Spire contacted local officials in the affected communities and is providing needed communications assistance and support for twister victims.

About C Spire
C Spire is a diversified telecommunications and technology services company that provides world-class, customer-inspired wireless communications, 1 Gigabit consumer Internet access as well as a full suite of Internet, wireless and Internet and data services for businesses. This news release and other announcements are available at www.cspire.com/news. For more information about C Spire, visit www.cspire.com or follow us on Facebook at www.facebook.com/cspire or Twitter at www.twitter.com/cspire.