Terabit fibre optic cable enables 'Bristol is Open'

'Bristol Is Open' is a joint venture between Bristol City Council and Bristol University designed to bring high-grade broadband to the city, which has been designated as one of the UK’s Superconnected cities. It is based around a terabit fibre optic cable that runs through the city centre, servicing 53 business hotspots. The fibre provides a network backbone and will have a variety of wireless sub-networks enabling technologies hanging off it that will combine to create an experimental test bed. The network is intended to deliver user data rates up to 1Gb/s, using a combination of WiFi, LTE and other novel wireless access technologies.

The objective is to extend gigabit coverage from the core fibre network into those areas of the city that cannot connect directly to the fibre network. The Lightning module will provide a Gigabit Ethernet connection that can be used by a standard WiFi or LTE base station to connect into the core network. A total of 40 modules will be deployed in various configurations by March 2015 across the centre of Bristol.

With funding secured from the Department of Culture, Media and Sport, 'Bristol Is Open' will seek to capture information about many aspects of city life, including energy, air quality and traffic flows.

Mark Barrett, CMO, Blu Wireless Technology, commented: “We are excited to be supplying our cutting edge MMW technology to the ‘Bristol is Open’ project. We believe that the combination of electronic beam steering with our HYDRA gigabit rate MMW wireless modem and dynamic SDN mesh networking will place Bristol in the forefront of this rapidly growing market”.

“This pioneering project has massive potential and will go further to cement Bristol’s growing international reputation as a collaborative laboratory for change. During our year as European Green Capital and beyond it will help people develop tomorrow’s technology and better understand how a modern city operates; linking things up in brand new ways and opening us up to all sort of possibilities," added George Ferguson, Mayor of Bristol.