Your laptop’s internet connection could be about to accelerate by up to 100 times its normal speed – that’s fast enough to download more than a dozen HD films in a second.
The speed boost will come from an unlikely source: the lighting above your head. Instead of Wi-Fi radio aerials beaming data through buildings to your laptop, computer-controlled LED bulbs will flicker above your head, beaming out signals like a super-fast Morse code.
To pick up, you will have to plug a dongle into a laptop, which will “read” the tiny variations in light. In areas where Wi-Fi doesn’t work, it could provide super-fast connections – delivered via ordinary light bulbs. It sounds like science fiction, but “Li-Fi” is already under test in offices, and could be in homes within three years.
“Li-Fi is safer and more secure than Wi-Fi – and it’s much faster,” says Deepak Solanki of Velmenni, an Estonian company which is testing the technology in its offices, using LED bulbs with tiny controllers attached.