EXTRA! EXTRA! EXTRA!
We Must Act on Google's Request For Information
Our Municipal Underground Conduit System is Key Advantage
Special to the Readers of Milwaukeeworld.com
By Michael Horne
And The Milwaukee World Hound Dog Team
Google is planning to launch an experiment that we hope will make Internet access better and faster for everyone. We plan to test ultra-high speed broadband networks in one or more trial locations across the country. Our networks will deliver Internet speeds more than 100 times faster than what most Americans have access to today, over 1 gigabit per second, fiber-to-the-home connections. We'll offer service at a competitive price to at least 50,000 and potentially up to 500,000 people.
From now until March 26th, we're asking interested municipalities to provide us with information about their communities through a Request for information (RFI), which we'll use to determine where to build our network.
All right, Milwaukee, time to get to work! Google, Inc. has issued an appeal to government officials at the State, County and Local levels to nominate their communities for a test program to provide true high speed internet service.
Competition will be tight, but it is urgent that the City of Milwaukee act this time.
I'll wait right here while you send your message to Google.
Whoever you are, make sure to note in your nomination Milwaukee's superior underground communications conduit system, part of the
Infrastructure Services Division of the Department of Public Works. The existence of this system could put Milwaukee at a true advantage for a change, since the conduit is in place, and has been for 110 years. Few other communities have such a conduit, and it is expected that any great broadband deployment in those cities would require tremendous capital expense that we have been spared due to the prudence of our forefathers. Plus, the
City has an entire body of law in place governing use of its conduit by others -- another advantage.
Early in the Barrett administration, the city toyed with the idea of granting conduit access to a firm that proposed a citywide Wireless system. This department was not too fond of the proposed system, and the firm was never able to raise sufficient funds to progress. [See 2004 Milwaukeeworld item below.]
Google, however,
does have the money, and Milwaukee has the need. Tell your aldermen, tell the mayor, tell City Engineer
Jeff Polenske and DPW Commissioner
Jeff Mantes that they can't go home until they get this application in Google's hands. (You don't have to bother telling
Scott Walker. It might confuse him.) The response deadline is March 26th, 2010, and we better have one.
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Milwaukeeworld item from 2004:
BROADBAND II
MILWAUKEE’S SECRET ASSET
Last week we visited the topic of Broadband, which you could loosely define as encompassing the future of everything for this city. With such significance, it is no surprise that Broadband is of importance to all cities, including many much larger than Milwaukee.
Should we give up, and let the flow of information to our homes and businesses remain a trinkle while it gushes in such outposts as New Zealand, China, India and Africa?
If not, then what natural advantage does Milwaukee possess that would enable it to enter the front ranks of information centers?
The answer: our unique and foresighted infrastructure.
In 1890 the City of Milwaukee created a municipal conduit system to interconnect the fire and police stations with call boxes. Local residents recognize these old call boxes as ornate cast iron columns six feet tall and usually painted blue. The call boxes were distributed along the paths of the beat cops, providing a means of landline communications within each four-block area.
Over the years these municipal rights-of-way have been upgraded and expanded to include street light power, light and traffic control systems as well as communications links between city offices, and other uses, some classified.
Why is this important?
Pre-existing conduit can dramatically reduce the cost of installing fiber-optic cable. That conduit can be used to deploy high capacity broadband throughout the city – not simply on trunk lines like Broadway, as is the case now.
Few cities could be as easily “wired” (and “wirelessed”) as Milwaukee; the cost savings could be sufficiently significant to place us at an international competitive advantage.
Our city neighborhoods would pulse with information, and companies would be attracted to our city.
Milwaukee proudly markets its many virtues, yet its sales pitch often falls on deaf ears. In the global information economy, companies are not particularly interested where they locate – the work can be anywhere on the planet, provided the locality has sufficient and dependable broadband.
Milwaukee was known as the city that produced nuts and bolts. We made the machines that made the infrastructure of other cities.
Now, in a service and information economy, it is vital that we pay attention to our own superior infrastructure and adapt the 19th century marvel to its 21st century promise.
It is not a technological hurdle we face.
It is a political one.
Despite the fact that “we ought to be aggressively pursuing getting broadband built-out in this city,” according to City Information Officer Randy Gschwind, “we may have lost business,” due to a lack of a comprehensive strategy – a will – to get the job done.
It doesn’t help that the legislature has made it exceedingly difficult for municipalities to set up their own broadband entities (so long, Sewer Socialism), or that the weak, expensive broadband we have now is controlled by two businesses whose lobbyists show up at the door anytime an alternative is floated.
Milwaukee must find a way to be a pioneer in the future economy. The city might have to knock on a few doors before the capital finds us, but with the availability of our superior municipal conduit system as an asset, the money is probably out there waiting.
Most importantly, we must find the way to act quickly, for once, before our precious 19th century asset is merely an artifact from bygone era, a time when Milwaukee was a technological leader.
As Gschwind says, “we must do our damnedest to see that our city leaders know this is important.”
