There will soon be a new option for broadband internet in many parts of Berrien County. Speaking to the Berrien County Board of Commissioners on Thursday, Matthew Sams with Mercury Broadband said his company is taking part in three initiatives to expand high-speed internet into underserved areas.
“We’ve got slated for construction 21 fixed wireless access sites spread throughout the county to connect these rural communities,” Sams said. “These wireless access sites will all be capable of supporting that 100 megabit download speed. We don’t have any data limitations with the services we provide, so it’s unlimited data.”
Mercury Broadband is using federal programs that provide support to companies expand to rural areas.
“The goal of our company is to really focus on those unserved communities. We’re not too interested in trying to compete with big telecoms in more established, urbanized areas. So with this distribution of the subscriber access sites and the equipment we’re using, it’s going to be very widely available, even though the support is technically limited to a specific number of locations.”
Sams said many of the equipment sites will be on the eastern side of the county. Some sites will go live this year. Berrien County Administrator Brian Dissette said he’s thrilled about the project.
