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

  • ITS Canada celebrates 25 years
    September 20, 2022
    Here in Los Angeles, ITS Canada continues to celebrate its 25th year. The theme is “Never stop moving. Never stop improving,” says Ian Steele, chief executive of ITS Canada. This, says Steele, is essential to make transportation more safe, efficient, accessible and with less impactful on the environment.
    Read More
  • Bus Services Bill ‘to give greater accountability for customers’
    May 19, 2016
    According to Nathan Marsh, Smart Transport director at EY, a new Bus Services Bill included today’s Queen’s Speech could herald just the beginning of a journey to smarter travel and paves the way for cities and regions to reap the benefits of a London-style network. The speech also included a range of measures to modernise the UK’s economy, such as a Modern Transport Bill which included legislation to enable the development of commercial spaceports and new laws to make the UK ready to pioneer driverless
    Read More
  • EU supports key TEN-T infrastructure projects
    July 31, 2014
    In the last Calls of the trans-European transport network (TEN-T) Programme, the European Commission selected a total of 106 projects that will benefit from over US$428 million in EU support for improving transport infrastructure across Europe. The 52 projects selected from the 2013 Multi-Annual Call and 54 from the 2013 Annual Call will use the EU’s financial support to bring forward the completion of the TEN-T network as well as studying innovative ways of reducing the transport sector’s carbon footprint.
    Read More
  • Cubic partners with Microsoft CityNext
    November 18, 2016
    Cubic Transportation Systems (CTS), is to participate in Microsoft CityNext, a global initiative which aims to help cities do ‘new with less’, by combining the power of technology with innovative solutions to connect governments, businesses and citizens with services that increase efficiencies, reduce costs, foster a more sustainable environment and cultivate thriving communities. NextCity is Cubic’s coordinated framework for building a smarter tomorrow in the world’s urban centers where increasing popu
    Read More

Highlighted Content