Bristol Is Open is developing an open programmable city. The project is a collaboration among technology companies, media and telecommunications companies, universities, local communities, and local and national government. In addition, a new organization has been developed to provide management and oversight to this joint venture between Bristol City Council and the University of Bristol.
Bristol Is Open is building on the use of software-defined networking for a scenario quite different from what is currently used in mobile networks today. The network will include optical, wireless, radio frequency sensor mesh and computing resources in order to provide an open and programmable communications platform. In other words, a live city test bed for organizations that wish to trial an idea to be able to do so in a live city environment. Through the use of SDN, each group with an approved proposal will get their own virtual network to try out their ideas. I think this is a pretty cool idea – an entire city that is a live test bed. This functionality is termed “City Experimentation as a Service.”
The infrastructure basically consists of a fiber ring and wide-area wireless mesh network made possible because the city has a network of a cable TV company’s redundant ducts that were refurbished and used to originally network city council buildings and deploy BNet (a network owned by the city). The fiber has been upgraded for use as a research and development test bed, and beginning in April the network will enable a mile of programmable wireless connectivity along the Brunel Mile and an RF mesh network across the city using 1,500 lampposts. Over time, the data collected from the network is to be compiled and made available via a website for anyone who wants to learn more.
The topics that immediately get discussed as potential test ideas include the “Internet of Things,” autonomous vehicles, smart city/home and elder care. But there are also many media-related and artist topics in discussion. For example, the BBC will be working with the project to understand the abilities the SDN network provides to capture and distribute digital 3D, 4K UHD video with near real-time editing capabilities. 
NEC is one of the key announced partners in the program. It will be interesting to see the topics that get tested in this live city test bed.
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Claudia Bacco, Managing Director – EMEA for RCR Wireless News, has spent her entire career in telecom, IT and security. Having experience as an operator, software and hardware vendor and as a well-known industry analyst, she has many opinions on the market. She’ll be sharing those opinions along with ongoing trend analysis for RCR Wireless News.
