The latest thing the internet engineers have cooking in their lab is Light Fidelity technology, or LiFi.
From laboratory test runs, the LiFi technology is reported to deliver speeds of about 224GB/second (that’s about 1000 full albums or 44 HD movies in one second). It’s obvious this is not your regular broadband, more like doped up Broadband on steroids. I can only imagine what would happen if you left it running overnight.
Reports say the tech is already having real world test runs in Estonia.
The technology powering LiFi is based on rapidly flashing LED lights, which causes a release of data – data that is able to travel in the visible light spectrum, which also happens to be part of the electromagnetic spectrum. The difference then, is that visible light has a wider spectrum than radio waves (which powers WiFi) giving it the ability to transfer more data.
A slight disadvantage is that light waves cannot penetrate walls which makes the range restricted. Nevertheless, this also makes LiFi very secure, relative to WiFi. Apparently, it can also transmit via light bulbs, thereby making every household light bulb a potential LiFi transmitter. Truly fascinating stuff.
When this technology becomes mainstream, you can expect to see its rippling effect especially on storage devices in phones, tablets and laptops. Also expect major drops in the cost of accessing WiFi broadband, since it will now become the equivalent of dial up internet.
Someone once said, there is no such thing as too fast when it comes to the internet. Guess he was right.
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