Monday, November 07, 2005

Milwaukee Wi-Fi Proposal Leaps First Hurdle The Milwaukee Common Council's Steering and Rules Committee, composed of all the council committee chairs, last week unanimously gave city administration the right to negotiate with Midwest Fiber Networks about its proposal to blanket the city with Wi-Fi hotspots. The full council is expected to confirm that decision next week. The proposal came with personal backing from Mayor Tom Barrett, and representatives from Milwaukee Public Schools, UW-Milwaukee, and the Private Industry Council as a way to jumpstart the transformation of the popular image of Milwaukee from beer-and-machine-tool-maker-to-the-world to hip-and-high-tech. Some details are coming out about this deal. Midwest Fiber Networks (aka MWFN) announced that Earthlink was interested (or perhaps even signed on) to be the first carrier on the network. So far at least, the city appears to be insisting that the network be open to any and all providers, which is one good sign. The access costs for you and me will allegedly be in the $20/month ballpark. The city is also alleged to be debating whether to require half-price access to low-income folks, or whether to have some geographic area (presumably in the central part of this hypersegregated city) guaranteed free access. In a slightly less breathless examination of the idea than its first story on the subject (plastered as the banner headline "Wi-Fi plan may give city a digital edge"), the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel ran a long story (placed at the bottom of Page One, but with two page-jumps!) by John Schmid and Stanley A. Miller II, which aimed to tell its readers exactly what this thing is. As an introduction to Wi-Fi, it's not bad (though I would have used a laptop-in-the-park example, but that's just me). And its use of the "Wi-Fi is untested technology that may just be a passing fad" dissent has some merit, but this isn't the primary worry I have about this thing. Schmid and Miller offer this as a win-win for the city and MWFN, and gloss over what happens if MWFN goes into massive debt to build the network, and then goes belly up. What happens to the users? Can the city gain control? These are just a few of the questions the city should get answers to before granting final approval. We'll try to keep on top of the situation. **Update 11/19/05: You may have read (or tried to read) Donna Rafaelli's comment on this post. It is now more legible, after I added some paragraph tags to her post. It also looks like I'll be talking with her soon. More on that later. Also, the Common Council did formally open negotiations with MWFN on a 15-1 vote, with only Black Nationalist Ald. Michael McGee Jr. in opposition. ** 9:56:50 PM    comment []