Blu Wireless has announced its participation in experimental high-speed network, Bristol Is Open.

Bristol Is Open is a joint venture between Bristol City Council and Bristol University, designed to bring high-grade broadband to the city, which has been designated as one of the UK’s Superconnected cities.  It is based around a ‘Terabit’ fibre optic cable that runs through the city centre, servicing 53 business hotspots. The fibre provides a network backbone and will have a variety of wireless sub-networks enabling technologies hanging off it that will combine to create an experimental test bed. The network is intended to deliver user data rates up to 1 Gbps – using a combination of WiFi, LTE and other novel wireless access technologies.

Blu Wireless Technology will deploy a number of 60 GHz wireless ‘Lightning’ modules that use BWT’s custom baseband gigabit modem architecture, HYDRA, to provide a novel wireless mesh backhaul link.  The objective is to extend gigabit coverage from the core fibre network into those areas of the city that cannot connect directly to the fibre network. The Lightning module will provide a Gigabit Ethernet connection that can be used by a standard WiFi or LTE base station to connect into the core network.

A total of 40 Lightning modules will be deployed in various configurations by March 2015 across the centre of Bristol.

Mark Barrett, Blu Wireless Technology CMO said: “We are excited to be supplying our cutting edge millimeter wave technology to the ‘Bristol is Open’ project.  We believe that the combination of electronic beam steering with our HYDRA gigabit rate millimeter wave wireless modem and dynamic SDN mesh networking will place Bristol in the forefront of this rapidly growing market”.

Blu Wireless will also be demonstrating their Lightning modules at Mobile World Congress on 2-5 March. They can be found at Hall 6, Booth 6E30.