There Is Such A Thing As Li-Fi And It’s 100 Times Faster Than Wi-Fi

Next time you watch a download bar slowly advance at glacial speed, remember, somewhere over the horizon, Li-Fi awaits.

Invented by the University of Edinburgh’s Harald Hass in 2011, Li-Fi (short for ‘light fidelity’) transmits data by the flickering light of a single LED, instead of via radio waves (which is how Wi-Fi works).

Since light can’t pass through walls, those flickering LEDs, annoyingly, need to be facing your device. However, that also means there’s far less interference, making it super-fast.

Earlier this year, scientists managed to achieve transfer speeds of 224 gigabits per second with Li-Fi. According to the International Business Times, that roughly equates to “18 movies of 1.5GB each… downloaded in a single second.” (Emphasis ours, because what?!)

Still, the question remained: How would it cope in a real-world environment?

We now know: Pretty damn well.

Science Alert says that Li-Fi was trialled in offices and industrial environments in Tallinn, Estonia, where data was transmitted at 1GB per second.

They also add that the flickering LED lights are “imperceptible to the naked eye,” for anyone who, quite reasonably, doesn’t want to work in an office where the lights are constantly being turned off and on to power the internet.

Though Li-Fi isn’t about to be rolled out to a town near you – that is, unless you actually do live in Tallinn, Estonia – the most recent tests are a definite advancement.

In January, it was revealed that the average Australian connection speed is 6.9 Mbps.

Bring us your Li-Fi already, Hass!