The Light Fantastic: Bulbs Could Soon Be Used To Broadcast Household Broadband by Daniel Bates

The Light Fantastic: Bulbs Could Soon Be Used To Broadcast Household Broadband by Daniel Bates:

Light bulbs could be soon used to broadcast wireless Internet, a leading physicist has claimed.

Harald Hass said he has developed a technology which can broadcast data through the same connection as a normal lamp.

By simply turning on the light in the room you could also switch on your Internet connection, he said in a speech.

Other possibilities of the device – which he has dubbed ‘Li-fi’, or Light Fidelity – include sending wireless data from the ‘white space’ in your television spectrum or unused satellite signals.

Professor Hass, of the school of engineering at Edinburgh University in the UK, said that currently we use radio waves to transmit data which are inefficient..................

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With mobile phones there are 1.4 million base stations boosting the signal but most of the energy is used to cool it, making it only five per cent efficient.

By comparison there are 40 billion light bulbs in use across the world which are far more efficient.

By replacing old fashioned incandescent models with LED bulbs he claimed he could turn them all into Internet transmitters.