News / bristol city council
Cable TV network used for future city tests
A farsighted decision by the council in the 1990s is helping Bristol to become a hi-tech testing ground for research into the future of cities.
Bristol City Council bought cable TV operator Rediffusion’s ducting network – the pipework used to route the cables around the city.
Using this 100-mile network, as well as a £4.3million fund from the government’s Urban Broadband Fund, the city council alongside Bristol University is building the UK’s fastest network purely for research and development.
is needed now More than ever
Users will be able to access unlimited bandwidth, and share vast amounts of data, with multiple environmental applications and benefits.
High performance networking, wireless communications, distributed high performance computing and an “Internet of Things” will enable planning for more efficient use of energy and resources.
Areas that could be researched include future mobile phone networks, new apps, traffic flow – and thus pollution control and the potential for driverless cars – smart power grids and metering, and remote healthcare.
“There is no other place in the world where they can do this,” said Professor Dimitra Simeonidou, the project’s chief technical officer. “This is like an open laboratory.”
The underground fibre will be linked to a wireless infrastructure relayed using clusters of lamp posts, which will harvest data from sensors embedded in traffic lights, buildings, cars, mobile phones and other handheld devices.
Meanwhile, the university’s supercomputer Blue Crystal 2 will be added to the network when it is released from its climate modelling duties.
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