By MATT PIKE
St. Joseph Post
In an effort to continue expanding rural broadband a new internet option has made roots in St. Joseph.
Mercury Broadband will serve homes and businesses in the surrounding St. Joseph area as well as Atchison, Brown, and Doniphan counties in northeast Kansas.
Founder and CEO of Mercury Broadband Garrett Wiseman says he chose St. Joseph to open a service center because of the need he saw in the area.
"There's a lot of rural communities in the St. Joseph area that don't have good broadband internet service and so we're expanding to this area and we're going to try to fill that need and provide those services to support the communities in this area," Wiseman tells reporters.
Along with serving the area Wiseman says Mercury Broadband will provide new jobs in St. Joseph with the company wanting to hire 30 new employees.
Wiseman says most of the areas Mercury will focus on are outside the city limits of St. Joseph.
"So, we're not going in and building into St. Joe proper, per say, we're going into areas that don't have these services or maybe are on a legacy DSL network or maybe only have access to satellite or cellular broadband internet," Wiseman explains. "And so, we're building out into these areas that don't have internet access or good internet access and those are the communities that we're really going after to support."
Wiseman says the plan for Mercury is to build out to 40-thousand homes in the rural area around St. Joseph.
"These are rural homes, so I think we're going to have a huge impact on the community and really provide a great service that's much needed in the area," he says.
Mercury Broadband will serve homes and businesses in the rural and surrounding areas of St. Joseph and Buchanan County, including Atchison, Brown, and Doniphan Counties in northeast Kansas.