PROMISE CITY, Iowa (AP) — Local builders and avid do-it-yourselfers have long turned to Lockridge, Inc. for construction materials. Many residents are beginning to turn to them for high-speed Internet. The Daily Iowegian reports the unique scenario recently drew the attention of Gov. Kim Reynolds and her Lt. Gov. Adam Gregg, as they stopped at the company’s Promise City location during a southern Iowa swing.

Lockridge, Inc., a family-owned building materials company with locations in Wayne, Appanoose, Lucas and Putnam counties, set out about two years ago to come up with a solution to their own internal problem of obtaining high-speed internet. That solution may end up solving a societal problem faced by many in rural southeastern Iowa. Challenges with getting high-speed Internet in rural areas and even small towns have proved a struggle, even in places in which federal data states an area has access to high-speed internet, that data doesn’t always prove true.

The Lockridge company is headquartered where the business began in the 1940s in Promise City, population 113. The location houses their company network, including point-of-sale and their estimate generation systems. Getting their other locations in Centerville, Chariton and Unionville, Missouri able to connect to that network, however, was sometimes a challenge due to the lack of broadband access in the area.

Around the same time, they were aiding in the construction of a home for Pete Krebs, who has an Internet networking background. Together, they came up with a solution: Create Lockridge’s own wireless Internet network. That involved setting up various towers in the area, which drew questions from curious residents in the sparsely populated rural areas. Caleb Housh, a sales manager of the family-run business, said at first some employees of Lockridge themselves got connected with the system. The family began seeing they could begin offering the service to the communities they serve.

Housh said the service is still in a pre-launch stage. Krebs said over two years the new Internet service company has grown confident in their network and service options. Krebs, who co-owns the new Lockridge Networks company, told Reynolds that just a few feet in elevation change can make a major difference in the kind of power or radios that need to be used to establish service. One day, Housh told Reynolds, the dream is that service would be available south of the Highway 34 corridor between Interstate 35 and the Mississippi River. For now, the service is expected to remain in somewhat of a soft-launching phase until the first part of 2019.