Connecting Albert Square

As part of Manchester’s Digital Strategy to develop Next Generation Broadband, the area covering Oxford Road, known as The Corridor, is being prepared to receive high speed, fibre broadband. MDDA has identified a way to easily provide trial connectivity for Albert Square, using the high speed internet connection from our offices.

What’s involved – Initial Steps?

Being ideally placed on Portland Street we have a clear line of sight to Manchester’s town hall clock face from the roof of our building. Placing several wireless transmitters and then connecting them up to our own internet connection, we were able to successfully transmit data to a receiver located in the Town Hall clock face tower.

We have made several trips up the town hall tower to check suitability for our equipment (power etc) and once this was finalised and configured the transmission began.

What’s involved – Connecting Albert Square?

We ran Ethernet cables down from the clock tower to a single room on the 6^th floor of the town hall and connected them to several wireless access points located in the office windows. These routers are wirelessly transmitting the internet across Albert Square.

What does this mean for Manchester & what’s next?

There are many potential benefits that this could provide but during the installation process we were followed by Paul Carruthers from Manchester Business School who has published a document that may explain this better.

What it means for you…

For the duration of this trial anyone with a wi-fi equipped laptop or other device will be able to access free internet connectivity from Albert Square and nearby. Because this is a trial, we’d love to hear how you’ve used it.

View the latest webcam image below:

Manchester Webcam