In late January 2026, as Winter Storm Fern swept across the Eastern U.S., it left a mark no one is likely to forget — especially communities in the heart of C Spire's wireless footprint.
The storm’s wallop of snow, sleet and ice left a trail of extensive damage stretching thousands of miles, but the city of Oxford, Mississippi, saw the most ice accumulation of all. The widespread devastation and debris from falling limbs and trees encased in an historic 1.24 inches of ice caused power outages that lasted up to three weeks for some residents.
“They said if they took all of the debris in the city of Oxford and filled up Vaught-Hemingway Stadium,” says Oxford Mayor Robyn Tannehill, “it would be 800 feet tall.’”
Sleet Begins to Freeze into Ice
For many residents, the worst impacts began overnight. Trees weighted down by accumulating ice began to crack, splinter and fall with a sound that startled people from their sleep. Brad Akin, owner of Shadrach's Coffee in Oxford, was one of them.
“It was that Saturday night into Sunday morning, in the middle of the night, when our power went off and everything was incredibly dark,” Akin says. “We could hear the crashing of limbs falling all around our house. It was just very scary.”
With no electricity, Akin's family gathered around the fireplace and stayed there for days. Outside, downed limbs had blocked the driveway completely. Walking outside was its own risk — ice-coated branches overhead kept falling long after the storm itself had passed.
For Tannehill, standing in her own backyard that Saturday night, watching sparks from blown transformers light up the dark, the weight of it hit differently. "All I could think of, standing in my backyard, is, this is happening across our entire community."
When Getting There Was the Battle
Once daylight arrived and the scale of the damage became clear, officials realized this wasn't a storm you could simply clean up and move past. Roads were blocked, hampering efforts by emergency responders to reach people in need. Tannehill knew communication was critical.
“There were a lot of 911 calls, but we simply couldn't get there because trees were blocking roadways,” she says. Fortunately, the city was able to coordinate over the C Spire wireless network to locate all-terrain vehicles to help residents outside the reach of typical emergency vehicles. “If we weren't able to make those connections and those phone calls, I think that the bad outcomes would have certainly been higher than they were."
Staying connected — not just for convenience, but for survival — was the through-line of the entire crisis.
Preparing for the Worst, Hoping for the Best
Long before the storm made landfall, C Spire's network operations center was already tracking forecast models, auditing generator fuel levels, assessing vehicle conditions, and positioning field teams.
When the worst arrived, C Spire crews became first responders in the truest sense of the term. Their initial mission was clearing downed trees blocking routes to cell towers, then refueling the generators that power them.
“The farther north we went, the worse it got,” one team member recalled. “One of our teams cut a mile and a half to a tower. We were toting five-gallon jugs to tower after tower.”
Feeding the Need
Keeping the network active throughout the storm and recovery was C Spire’s core mission, but hardly the extent.
C Spire stores in Oxford and Grenada opened their parking lots as Wi-Fi hotspots, giving anyone — C Spire customer or not — a place to park, connect and access news and communications. Inside the Oxford store, over three days, the team fed approximately 600 linemen, first responders and community members who had nowhere else to go warm. Over in the Delta, the Cleveland store fed locals, too.
“We wanted to be a safe space for customers who didn't have heat, who didn't have electricity, who didn't have Wi-Fi,” says Deshone Thompson, Oxford market manager. “Some were customers, but we had a lot of people with other carriers that were like, ‘I can't believe you guys are doing this.’ We had a young mother and her child sitting in here charging her computer so she could do work. It was heartwarming to see the response.”
Getting Back to Normal
For small business owners like Akin, the road back to business as usual was tied to restoring essentials like access to electricity, water — and like most businesses today, internet.
“Internet is vital to our doing business,” he says. “Most of our customers use a credit card to purchase, and therefore if we can't process credit cards, we are toast.”
When Akin called C Spire in search of a solution, the response was immediate. The next day, as cleanup crews collected debris, Shadrach's was one of the only businesses open and accepting credit card payments.
“When we're able to go back online and be open and serve our customers again,” he says, “that just gives everybody a sense of normalcy.”
What the Storm Revealed
Around Oxford and the surrounding countryside, trees are sprouting new leaves and turning the landscape lush shades of green. Likewise, communities across northern Mississippi are doing the slow work of putting things back together. But as with earlier disasters, locals are recovering by helping each other.
“To see the community rally together to try to help each other to get life back to normal was just inspiring to see,” Akin says. "Neighbors stepped up to help neighbors. Strangers helping complete strangers."
Mayor Tannehill put it plainly. “Our community put its best foot forward, and we'll continue to do that as we build our community back stronger than it was before.”
From inside C Spire, the feeling was the same.
“What we've proven here is that our communities can trust in us — that we're going to be there for them, that we're going to take care of them during this type of event,” says Alan Jones, SVP and chief network officer.