Bristol's City Council has chosen Cityspace as its preferred partner to deliver a major extension to the areas broadband Wi-Fi (wireless) ‘Hotzone’ network. The current one, which is also run by Cityspace, covers 3kms of the city centre.

It's anticipated that the extension will improve coverage to 6kms, including many more business premises than before and expanding public access in general. The wireless technology itself is based off the very latest BelAir Networks suite, which can be upgraded to WiMax when required.

The network is made up of 4 radio nodes mounted on streetlights and or buildings. The 4-radio architecture allows Cityspace to create a blanket of 802.11 b/g 56Mbps access across the city with relatively few fixed egress points.

Each node in the network has up to 75Mbps of backhaul capacity to its peers. Connection to the Internet is via conventional 100Mbps Ethernet or Ethernet over fibre.