Bristol is Open Limited was launched in April 2015 as a joint venture between Bristol City Council and the University of Bristol to run a city-scale testbed for smart city technologies. It was Bristol’s vehicle in the EU–Japan BigClouT project and supplied the network, IoT and analytics infrastructure for the city’s pollution-aware walking-route pilot.
Bristol is Open grew out of the UK government’s Super-Connected Cities programme, which provided £5.3 million through DCMS and BDUK to build a programmable digital infrastructure in Bristol. Bristol City Council and the University of Bristol launched the company in April 2015 so that researchers and businesses could test new applications on real city infrastructure rather than in the lab.
The company researched software-defined networking, the Internet of Things, 5G, artificial intelligence and machine learning, CCTV analytics and high-performance computing. It ran three main projects: BigClouT, REPLICATE and 5G Smart Tourism. After three years, Bristol City Council took sole ownership, and the company is now dormant.
Bristol is Open set out to make Bristol a city-scale laboratory: an open, programmable network where companies, universities and the council could test smart city applications in real-world conditions and turn the results into better public services.
City-scale experimental network: a fibre-optic ring linking central nodes at We The Curious, Watershed, Engine Shed and the University of Bristol, plus a wide-area wireless mesh network and a refurbished duct network.
Testbed services: access to network, IoT and analytics infrastructure so that partners could trial applications in a live city environment.
Research projects: Bristol’s participation in BigClouT (IoT, cloud and big data), REPLICATE (energy efficiency and mobility) and 5G Smart Tourism (5G for CCTV, crowd analytics and event management).
