{image1}Two months after OnMilwaukee.com first reported on it, the City of Milwaukee is finally edging closer to the broadbanding of Brew City, according to Mayor Tom Barrett.
"We are beginning negotiations with a company that would (make) the city of Milwaukee a wireless city," Barrett told OnMilwaukee.com this morning.
Barrett sent a letter outlining the partnership plan with the Milwaukee-based Midwest Fiber Networks and other companies to the Common Council yesterday. Details -- including access to to conduits, City facilities, service details and revenue-generation -- will be hammered out in discussions, Barrett said.
"We are just going to start negotiations and hopefully the Common Council will give it their blessing today," said Barrett.
The Common Council's Finance and Personnel Committee, chaired by Ald. Michael Murphy, will discuss the plan at its meeting Wednesday morning.
In an Aug. 3 OnMilwaukee.com story, Milwaukee's chief information officer Randy Gschwind said, "I guess the answer is we've been trying to figure out how to do it ... and we've been talking to Time Warner and SBC about doing it elsewhere."
"I'm very excited about it," said Barrett. "I think it's great for Milwaukee. There are some cities that are further along in the negotiation process but we've got some infrastructure in place that may allow us to leapfrog them."
"Midwest Fiber Networks goal is to work with Mayor Barrett and the City Council to make Milwaukee the number one wireless city in America and to set the standard for wireless accessibility," said Nik Ivancevic, a partner in Midwest Fiber Networks, in a City of Milwaukee press release.
Stay tuned for more. Meanwhile, read the entire Aug. 3 story here.
Born in Brooklyn, N.Y., where he lived until he was 17, Bobby received his BA-Mass Communications from UWM in 1989 and has lived in Walker's Point, Bay View, Enderis Park, South Milwaukee and on the East Side.
He has published three non-fiction books in Italy – including one about an event in Milwaukee history, which was published in the U.S. in autumn 2010. Four more books, all about Milwaukee, have been published by The History Press.
With his most recent band, The Yell Leaders, Bobby released four LPs and had a songs featured in episodes of TV's "Party of Five" and "Dawson's Creek," and films in Japan, South America and the U.S. The Yell Leaders were named the best unsigned band in their region by VH-1 as part of its Rock Across America 1998 Tour. Most recently, the band contributed tracks to a UK vinyl/CD tribute to the Redskins and collaborated on a track with Italian novelist Enrico Remmert.
He's produced three installments of the "OMCD" series of local music compilations for OnMilwaukee.com and in 2007 produced a CD of Italian music and poetry.
In 2005, he was awarded the City of Asti's (Italy) Journalism Prize for his work focusing on that area. He has also won awards from the Milwaukee Press Club.
He has be heard on 88Nine Radio Milwaukee talking about his "Urban Spelunking" series of stories, in that station's most popular podcast.
