Season 3, Episode 9- new services from CNSNext- learn about NextGEN and NextStream

On this episode, we focus on CNSNext. Rebecca Fielding, Marketing Manager for CNSNext, talks with us about the latest features and upgrades from our local service provider.   Thanks for tuning in!

https://cnsnext.com/

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Welcome to Thomasville Insights with the City of Thomasville. On the podcast, we'll talk to experts on everything from Thomasville history and events to daily operations and city business, all while having some fun in the process where you host a master games. And I'm sorry, Pearson. Welcome to the Thomasville Insights with the City of Thomasville. I am Austin Reams and I want to wish you guys a happy New Year. I'm here with a guest. I'm here with Tara and we'll introduce our guests in a minute. But, Tara, happy New Year. And my question to you is, when do you stop saying Happy New Year? Like we're kind of into January a little bit. When do you start? Well, first off, happy New Year, Austin. Thank you. I don't think you actually start right. A new year is a whole year. So even if I first saw you over me in January or July, it's a new year, right? Yeah. And so it's okay if I say Happy New Year in July to you. Yeah. If. If we haven't met. If we haven't met now since we've already met, you're disqualified. All right. I've already said it. My one time for you. Yeah, for this year. Got you. All right. Rebecca will introduce you, but we want to get your thoughts on that really quickly. But Rebecca is with CNSnext and has a lot of neat things to talk about. But what are your thoughts on when do you stop saying Happy New Year? I definitely have said it a lot over the past few days. Even maybe Chris, our New Year's Eve. I've said it a few times, but I think after a week or so, I'll I'll it'll just wear off for me. I'm not as as thoughtful as Tara is to greet everyone in the New Year as a new year. So for me, probably a week. And I just just kind of would all hoping to that because maybe, you know, by March I'd be like, Hey, man. All right, well, you know, we have a new host with us. We introduce Tara Pearson a couple of episodes ago, but really glad to have you with us. And Tara, you are the public information officer for the city of Thomasville and super glad to have you and take it away. thank you. I still I'm glad to be here. I'm excited about what we're doing. And again, to join you. You're a veteran voice here with the city of Thomasville, our media production manager. So I don't know if I can compete or it could compare this year with what you and Chri these been doing, but you've already you've already got me beat you know, so you have a track record at Channel six. You had the press box in Thomasville today. You produce great documentaries like can you not see you've done stories in stores of the bottom district and you do a lot of behind the film, behind the scenes filming here. So I don't think people really understand and you're your gift us. And so I thank you and I'm excited to be here with Rebecca as well as That's very kind words. Thank you. Appreciate that. And really glad to have Rebecca here. So tell Rebecca, tell us a little bit about your role and tell us a little bit about seeing as an expert. But what's your role at CNS next? So at CNS next, I am the marketing manager, so I handle all marketing aspects for CNS. Next in all four cities which include Thomasville, Cairo, Camilla and Moultrie. That's it all. There's a lot to do. Yes. One of the fascinating things about CNS next is, is our history. And I'm I'm a part not that I'm fascinating, but I am a part of it, But it's a story that I like to tell a lot of people. But what's what's CNS next? History within a community. Okay. So yeah, back in the nineties we saw a need for a fiber optic network for our local schools, libraries and businesses. And so we were able to provide that, but with just a limited offering. But we saw how successful that could be. So then we decided to give that option and service to everyone in the community. So with that, CNS was formed in CNS for those that don't know, is community Network Services. And while that was all happening, we also established the South Georgia Governmental Services Authority, SGGSA, which makes up those cities that I mentioned before, Thomasville, Cairo, Camilla and Moultrie. And they all work together to provide services to our community. So we're not missing little pockets. Okay, good. So tell us what's next with CNS? Next, What's next is our next stream service that we're going to provide, and that is a streaming service. And we are in the testing phase currently with that, but we hope to have it out to the public within the first quarter of this year. So if you'll just be following us on social media and those that are already customers will receive something in the mail soon with more information on how to utilize those services when they are available, we are excited to move from the traditional cable service to the streaming service because let's be honest, that's what everyone is looking for these days. It's convenient, It's it's portable. You can log in from vacation, you can have that availability there. So it's very exciting that we are able to provide that along with our Internet and our phone. Yeah, and getting to next stream, I would I've been able to test and it is an awesome product like a have Amazon fire stick and it's just you know downloaded the app real simply off of that and navigating channels it looks like you can record channels the navigation is is really I like that because I can just kind of skip right through and see what I want to see. And it's pretty cool service. It is. I have been testing it as well and I have enjoyed the features You can record, you can playback, which means if you are like me and you're limited on time, but you hop on and you see a movie that, it's almost over. But wow, I really would have liked to have seen that. Or Wow, that's my favorite movie. You can start it from the very beginning so you can watch all the Hallmark Christmas, movies every single one of them off. Yes. And it's so exciting. So that feature in and of itself is something I think a lot of folks are going to be excited about as well as I think we said the cloud DVR. So you can if you're moving from room to room, you can pick it up in another room and just watch it in there as well. So very exciting. Yeah, yeah, very exciting things. And like I said, again, the fact that it's just portable, you don't have to, you know, be at home to watch it and utilize your service. You can have it on your phone, you can have it on your tablet or your computer again when you're on vacation. And that big game is on that. Your wife playing the vacation. Anyway, you can log in and and watch it as neat. Now, also also new is just on the Internet side. Of course, we're you know well for Internet site. I mean, again, going back to the nineties we didn't want our businesses to be left behind. And we wanted to to have something with South Georgia and keep businesses here. And we've done that. So the Internet is a big side of that and those guys have a exciting stuff coming to you, right? Yeah, actually that is something that we did in 2023. We increased our speeds for our Internet and we have excuse me, we have created a new logo, so to speak, for that. And so instead of just CNS Next Internet, we it is next gen. So you may see that logo now more. And what that signifies is those higher speed packages as well as more competitive pricing for our customers. So we're excited. We have up to one gig, which is really great, faster download, faster upload speeds for customers, residential and commercial. And again, that's in all of our cities that we service. So folks have been really excited, really receptive. We've had a lot of folks hop on and that's really going to be hand-in-hand with the next Stream app. So you're able to stream that even better and faster. So it's exciting to have had that come out first. But more Internet than people need. Yes, it certainly is, but it is available. It is available. So we're excited to be able to provide it because people were looking for that. Yeah, it is funny on the technology side of this, people are they want that bandwidth. The bigger the better. That's great. Yeah. Yeah, that's I can imagine a lot of kids got PlayStations for Christmas or there's a lot of camera systems going up for the New Year's. So a lot of people are really looking to make sure that when their son is playing Call of Duty, they can watch the Hallmark movies in another room. So it's going to be yeah, on next next gen app. So with that being said, how can someone establish those services or how can they can they increase their tiers? What can someone do to get those packages? Absolutely. So if you're interested in increasing what you already have or if you are interested in becoming a new customer, you can go to our website CNS next dot com. You can find some information there. You can even got an application and then at that point a customer service representative from the city of Thomasville CNS next will contact you. But if you're just prefer an easier method of picking up the phone, certainly we have representatives able to answer and that number that you'll call is 18447218029. That will connect you with our customer service. Let them know what your needs are and they can get you set up and get someone out to your house if we need to get you connected or what have you. As I've upgraded services over the years, it's great to pick up the phone and talk to somebody within South Georgia. Yes. So that is one thing that we love to tell our customers is that we are a local service provider. When you pick up the phone, you're going to get a local person on the phone. They are knowledgeable on what we have. And we also have technicians in all of our cities. So when you do have to have someone come to your house, they are local and they can get there fairly quickly. So that is something we are very proud to to provide to our customers and go ahead and those in other cities, they can call the same number that anyone in Thomasville or resident from Thomasville will call. Absolutely. Last year, over the summer, we migrated all of our customer service representatives to a central location that is housed in Thomasville, which means that all of the customer service representatives are together, they work together, they work closely together, they're trained together so that it is consistent. But that means that we still do have the other technicians in other cities. So you call Thomasville, you call that number, but your technicians are still housed in your cities and can get to you fairly quickly. Yeah. So yes, everyone calls that one 800 number. Yeah. One of the examples of local I had is just, is just a friend of mine whose mom was getting older and was confused on a couple of things. You know, technology. I get confused. We all do. And you know, it was it was so good that he just called me and said, what about this? And I was like, you know, I just picked up the phone and said, you know, you know, this customer has this issue. And, you know, one of those local technicians roll the truck out there and solve this problem. That's the I mean, that happens all the time. That's kind of the evidence of of local service, right? Absolutely. Absolutely. Absolutely. I've experienced the same thing new to the neighborhood. And the technician came out and stayed until everything was done. And really, it was just a pleasant experience to talk to. And really I mean, you know, just meeting ordinary, ordinary people. Back to our questions here, though, Rebecca. Tell me about seeing as next in the future. There's a lot of as we get more into the, you know, streaming world, there's a lot more we can do a lot more bandwidth we have. So tell us about what what the latest and greatest and what's going on into the future with that. So once we have our next stream up and running, that will help with the bandwidth, is what I'm being told. A lot of that is way over my head. But we will it will allow us to provide faster Internet service to our customers and then hopefully in the future we will continue to be able to increase those and look to just better and faster customer service all the way around. Yeah, well, that that's great. We're we're looking there's been a lot of great changes that we're so excited about. Rebecca And just really neat to see that and really neat to see the the momentum that CNS Next has going for it. It's very exciting. Yeah, I think it makes you very proud of CNS next and CNS next gen. When you see that on major platforms and potentially on, you know, major streaming platforms that everyone is using. So that can really just take you a little bit farther. I mean, what can you see? You know, can you imagine that can go where certainly escalates our experience and just our presence online, like you said. I mean, I'm at home pulling up my fire stick and I type in next stream and there we are. And it's just so exciting to see it actually come to fruition and be there for us to be available. So it's it's extremely exciting. We worked hard for that, but we're happy to be there really, really happy And the good thing is, is that those profits go back into our communities and absolutely they stay here, which is a great thing. So we're proud of that, too. Yes, that is one thing that I want people to understand is, you know, what you see in this next. Well, we're a local customer service or local provider, which means that all of the money that we take in is then reinvested back into that service for you. But also we support our communities through sponsorships. And last year alone, we threw out our four cities that were able to donate$100,000, almost $100,000 to local organizations and sports teams and things in the communities to help support that community. So that is just such yeah, it's amazing. It's amazing. It's amazing to be able to say that that's what we're doing with our money, that you are supporting us, you're really supporting your own families in your own community. So it's really exciting. And that's just one year. That's just one year that is just 2023 year That's just 2023. And so that is one of my biggest things that I enjoy doing as CNS marketing manager. I work with the sponsorships and I get to work with the cities and it's so, so much fun. That's awesome. That's awesome. Rebecca Thank you. Thank you for coming in and just taking out some time of your day and giving us a little peek of what's to come see CNS next in CNS next gen After having me, I enjoyed it. Thank you. Just a few announcements we have will be closed. Our city offices will be closed to observe Martin Luther King Day on January the 15th. Our Black History Month parade is coming up Saturday, February 3rd. Those applications are due online January 17th. You can go to Thomasville dot org and on January 23rd, we will have a community. Let's discuss forum at our public library on North

Madison street from 5:30 to 6: 16:07

30 That's a Tuesday night. So just come out. We want people to come out and learn how you can save on your utility bill. It's getting cold outside. And if you know me, I'm not one for the cold, so I'm trying to make sure my doors are weather stripped, my windows are secure because look who does not want to save, especially after Christmas season, right? That's right. That's right. Well, Tara, great job, Rebecca. Thank you for being here. Thanks to our audience. We appreciate you all for listening and appreciate what everybody does for this community. This just to close the show. Thanks again for joining. I just want to remind everyone to subscribe to our podcast on your favorite listening app. And we will talk to you soon. You've been listening to Thomasville Insights with the City of Thomasville. The show is produced by the City of Thomasville Marketing Department. The show's music is by pond five dot com. To learn more about the city of Thomasville, visit Thomasville dot org or follow us on Social media. Don't forget to subscribe to the podcast on your favorite listening app so you don't miss an episode. Thanks for listening.