Before truly sustainable growth can occur, you first need a solid foundation. Helena, Alabama, a small city of 23,000 residents located 20 miles southwest of Birmingham, knows this better than most.

During the 1990s and into the 2000s, the number of people flocking to Helena rose quickly—aided by bona fides from Business Week, which ranked the city as the 13th Best Place to Raise Your Kids, and Money, which ranked it among the Top 100 Best Places to Live in the U.S. Since then, the town has experienced explosive growth of 400 percent.

But while Helena was able to retain its small-town charms amid such growth, the city’s communications systems failed to keep up.

“The city of Helena is a perfect example of a town that has outgrown its current infrastructure,” says Earl Holley, a senior account manager at C Spire Business. “Like most small municipalities, they had so many pieces that had been bale-wired together. But the reality of it is, they had infrastructure from 1996.”

Read the case study on Helena, Alabama here.