Bristol Is Open - NEC partnership aims to develop the open programmable city

NEC Corporation has signed a long-term partnership agreement with Bristol Is Open, a smart city initiative in the UK and a joint venture between Bristol City Council and the University of Bristol. It aims to create the world’s first open, programmable city to support the creation of innovative new smart services for people, business and academia. It intends to pave the way for improvements in a wide range of services, including traffic congestion, waste management, entertainment, e-democracy, and energy
February 10, 2016 Read time: 2 mins
1068 NEC Corporation has signed a long-term partnership agreement with Bristol Is Open, a smart city initiative in the UK and a joint venture between Bristol City Council and the University of Bristol.

It aims to create the world’s first open, programmable city to support the creation of innovative new smart services for people, business and academia. It intends to pave the way for improvements in a wide range of services, including traffic congestion, waste management, entertainment, e-democracy, and energy supply.

The partnership helps NEC to demonstrate new approaches to pervasive digital connectivity at city-scale, combined with its aim to create new social value for the changing world of tomorrow. It helps Bristol Is Open to further its goal of creating the world’s first open programmable city with a city-wide digital fabric that includes fibre in the ground, an experimental wireless mile, and a radio frequency (RF) mesh that covers the vast majority of the city.

NEC, Bristol Is Open and Bristol City Council are part of the €25m Replicate Lighthouse City consortium, alongside San Sebastián and Florence. The consortium will create integrated smart city solutions to tackle urban problems such as traffic congestion, poor air quality and unsustainable energy use. The consortium has received funding as part of the Smart Cities and Communities funding call, through EU’s Horizon 2020 innovation programme.

NEC has been supplying Bristol Is Open with advanced IT and communications technologies, including software-defined networking (SDN) compatible switches, LTE small cells and iPASOLINK ultra-compact microwave systems, helping them to build the smart city test bed platform.

The UK’s Digital Economy Minister Ed Vaizey said: "Bristol Is Open is one of the UK’s flagship digital smart city projects, led by the University of Bristol and Bristol City Council and part of the Government's super-connected cities programme. It's great to see NEC partner with Bristol Is Open, a collaboration that will help bring even more innovative technology and smarter services to Bristol residents and businesses."

For more information on companies in this article

NEC

Related Content

  • Crossing the line: managing traffic across jurisdictions
    June 18, 2024
    The US will eventually have a fully-digitised transportation network, with traffic management devices talking to each other across massive distances. It’s really a question of pain points on the road to full deployment, explains Mark Talbot of Q-Free
    Read More
  • Birmingham mobility action plan unveiled
    November 7, 2013
    Birmingham City Council has unveiled its Birmingham Mobility Action Plan (BMAP), a twenty-five year vision for improving transport in the congested UK city, which planners estimate will have an extra 80,000 cars on its road by 2031, bringing the network to a grinding halt.
    Read More
  • Towards pan-European electromobility services
    November 2, 2012
    Europe’s Green eMotion project has announced the test phase of a project that will demonstrate Europe-wide roaming in an interoperable electromobility system and will provide access to new added-value services. Green eMotion will also support the promotion of cross-sector ICT standards for interoperability of electric vehicle (EV) services. Green eMotion is a major EU funded electromobility project; one of its objectives is to develop an IT system that defines the interfaces needed for pan-European electro
    Read More
  • University of Nottingham signs up with TSC’s Deep Academic Alliance
    July 30, 2018
    The UK’s University of Nottingham has entered into a partnership to deliver skills and technology on smart transportation. It has signed a formal agreement with Transport Systems Catapult’s (TSC) Deep Academic Alliance (DAA). The initiative is part of the UK government’s stated ambition to make the country a world leader in driverless and interconnected vehicles and intelligent transport infrastructure. The DAA supports TSC’s five-year academic engagement strategy to ensure transport innovation has g
    Read More

Highlighted Content