“The Milwaukee Wireless Initiative is about covering the entire city of Milwaukee with wireless coverage everywhere.”
– Bruce Maas, interim chief information officer for Information & Media Technologies

The city of Milwaukee could be wireless within 18 months, and for the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, that may mean more than just being able to inexpensively surf the Web from almost anywhere.

The Milwaukee Wireless Initiative positions Milwaukee to become one of the first fully wireless large cities in America, at no cost to the city or taxpayers.

“The Milwaukee Wireless Initiative is about covering the entire city of Milwaukee with wireless coverage everywhere,” said Bruce Maas, interim chief information officer for Information & Media Technologies (I&MT) at UWM.

Local firm to build wireless network

After approval from the Milwaukee Common Council, Mayor Tom Barrett signed an agreement on Jan. 27 with a local firm that plans to build a $20 million wireless network.

The 14-year agreement is with Milwaukee-based Midwest Fiber Networks, which approached the city with its proposal in October.

According to the proposal, Midwest Fiber would require access to city facilities, including buildings, streetlights, traffic signals and underground conduits to install fiber optic cables and other hardware for the wireless network.

In addition, Midwest Fiber would lease bandwidth to service providers who would offer Internet access services to Milwaukee residents, businesses and other groups.

The agreement is not exclusive, however; other companies would have the ability to build their own networks and negotiate their own agreements with the city.

The plan also provides for a number of benefits to the city:

• A “walled garden” of 60 government or non-profit Web sites available for free. To access other sites, users would need to pay a monthly fee, which is expected to be about $20.
• A “good-faith effort” to hire city residents from low-income or disadvantaged areas for at least 25 percent of the jobs created by the project, along with a job training program.
• Four hundred free Internet accounts for city employees in the field and a 25 percent discount on additional accounts.
• A seed contribution of $150,000 from Midwest Fiber to the city’s “digital divide” fund, to be used to provide low-income or disadvantaged residents with computer and Internet access.
• A share of Midwest Fiber’s gross revenue from the network. The city will not receive anything in the first three years of the agreement, but beginning in the fourth year, it will receive 1 percent and then 3 percent beginning in the seventh year.

The agreement also calls for the construction of a “demonstration area” within four months to “get a segment of Milwaukee up and running,” said Donna Rafaelli-Meyer, a partner in Midwest Fiber Networks.

This demonstration area will be located west of downtown, bounded on the east by 10th Street, on the west by U.S. Highway 41, on the north by Vliet Street, and on the south by Canal Street. The area includes Marquette University, which, according to Randy Gschwind, chief information officer for the City of Milwaukee, will serve as a test for the network’s operation in an educational setting.

UWM may benefit

The university is involved in negotiations with the city and Midwest Fiber to obtain its own set of benefits from the Milwaukee Wireless Initiative.

“We got involved at UWM because we believe that this is good for our students, our faculty and our staff to have a low-cost option for connecting wirelessly throughout the city,” Maas said.

Gschwind said the city welcomes the university’s involvement in the Milwaukee Wireless Initiative and sees UWM’s role in the project as an opportunity for the university to truly serve its students.

“UWM’s role will be to get involved with how to best use this resource to best serve its constituencies,” he said.

Maas is currently lobbying city officials to make the UWM Web site one of the 60 sites designated for free access within the “walled garden.” He is also working with Midwest Fiber to see if PantherMail, PantherCal, PantherFile and Desire2Learn could also be available to users free of charge.

“If you think about that, access for someone to be able to check their e-mail at no cost, or their calendar, or their (stored) files … that might be all someone needs,” he said.

The university is also working closely with Milwaukee Public Schools and Milwaukee Area Technical College, along with Midwest Fiber, to negotiate a laptop under $500 that the institutions could recommend to their students.

“We actually believe that with this ability of this initiative and if the three institutions can agree, that we can get a laptop available, from a vendor to our students, that is a fully-functioning laptop for, our goal is, under $500,” Maas said.

Maas is also working with Midwest Fiber to see if there are opportunities for UWM students to obtain jobs as a part of the initiative.

“We think that there may be some good opportunities for UWM students to gain some valuable experience and then to help Midwest Fiber Networks to staff up and ramp up for this (project),” he said.

According to Nik Ivancevic, a partner in Midwest Fiber Networks, the university’s involvement has been “creative as well as positive.”

“Working with the university IT staff has been refreshing,” he said.

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