Bristol had bid for a share of a £100million government pot to build a broadband and Wi-fi network in the city to compare with the likes of Singapore.
Just before Christmas, ministers launched the Urban Broadband Fund with the aim of creating up to 10 UK cities to provide a showcase delivering “Singaporean levels of broadband connectivity” to businesses and consumers.
Bristol’s £22m bid is called Gigabit Bristol and is centred around a large area of the city comprising the Temple Quarter
Enterprise Zone, Harbourside and the University.
This 400-hectare area includes 5,000 businesses, 5,000 university students, 5,000 social housing tenants and 7 million people passing through every year.
The aim is to provide gigabit connectivity which is readily available to businesses and that ultrafast broadband is available to consumers – with investment from Government matched by investment from major telecoms providers.
The council also aims to extend Wi-Fi coverage both in the gigabit zone and across the city as a whole, providing open access Wi-Fi to approximately 80% of the city’s public spaces.
To achieve this, the Council would work with Telecoms providers to build on the existing 650 hot-spot B-Open network, which is currently used by university staff, students and members of the public.
The council is also proposing to develop an Ultrafast Demonstration Studio at Temple Meads, to provide business and consumers the opportunity to experience next generation broadband enabled services, such as High Definition Video Conferencing.
Council Leader Barbara Janke said: “Securing ultrafast broadband and extending Wi-Fi is key to maintaining and growing Bristol’s world-class knowledge economy.
“We want Bristol’s businesses and communities to benefit from the very best digital infrastructure, to put us on a level with world-class connected cities such as Singapore.
“The creative industries in Bristol employ around 9,000 people, making up 12% of all businesses in the city including Aardman Animations, BBC’s Natural History Unit, Endemol West and many other independent film and production companies. We have a clear vision to increase the size and impact of these types of businesses – our newly established Temple Quarter Enterprise Zone is testament to this ambition.
“Our bid is very strong and we have the ambition, knowledge and skills to make this project a success.”
It is expected that the Chancellor will announce the results in next month’s Budget. The Government has already stated that the four capitals – London, Edinburgh, Cardiff and Belfast – will benefit while the other cities will be chosen through a competition.
This sounds great, but in a world where the likes of SOPA and ACTA are being force-fed to us by our governments and the entertainment industry I can't see how it would be possible for businesses to be able to safely utilise a public broadband network that could be shut down at any second if the government "thinks" someone could be using it to download music or TV shows.
HD Video Conferencing will work quite nicely over a bog standard ADSL line, as long as people shut down their bittorrent clients for a bit.
"High Definition Video Conferencing"?
How can we possibly do business without it?
Old skool techies seem to manage quite nicely talking around the world via text-based IRC. That doesn't need oodles of bandwidth.
TBH, I don't think the average iPhone user can write in sentences.
Bellowing bullshit about the knowledge economy at a TV screen is about their limit.