Li-Fi, 100 times faster than Wi-Fi coming

A technology is coming that hopes to turn your light bulb into a data transfer connection capable of speeds 100 times faster than current Wi-Fi by 2020.

The breakthrough technology delivering these speeds is dubbed Li-Fi, and it was first publicly introduced by Professor Harald Haas of Edinburgh University four years ago.


The new technology, Li-Fi can offer internet speed up to one hundred times faster than the WiFi we use today. Li-Fi is known as light fidelity and it is now moving to trials in the real world. An office test which was held achieved the speed of 24GB per second which is the 100 times faster than the speed of the traditional Wi-Fi. 

Scientists have achieved speeds in the lab of up to 224GB per second, which is the equivalent of downloading 18 movies in the blink of an eye.

Li-Fi conveys data using LED lights, which flashes on and off within nanoseconds and invisible to the human eye. Unlike Wi-Fi signals which can penetrate walls, since Li-Fi is based on light and it can’t penetrate walls, so its range is theoretically more limited. 

However, because of that limit, Li-Fi is also possibly more secure from external threats. So that, it would be very tough for the hackers to hack your network. However for strong security and data protection, this can certainly be seen as an advantage.