“Visible light communications” are certainly nothing new. In ancient times, bonfires and sunlight bounced off of reflective surfaces were often used to communicate messages over long distances. In the 19th Century, Morse code led to the invention of “semaphores” that allowed the crew of a sea-going vessel to communicate with other ships over a distance. Telegraphy and wireless radio came along next but it wasn’t until fiber-optic cable and the communication possibilities which came along with it did our ability to transmit and receive data really and truly evolve.

Well folks…get ready for another quantum leap. Fiber optic communication, without the fiber.

Imagine being able to sit down anywhere in a building, open your laptop or tablet and instantly access the World Wide Web, doing all the things you normally do over a secure, reliable and incredibly fast connection. You may be thinking this is already widespread, known as Wi-Fi, but not so fast.

Traditional Wi-Fi Internet connection uses radio waves as its data transmission mode – from the router to the machine; anyone with access to that signal can access its communication potential.

Visible Light communication is the same principal, but by using light rather than RF, energy-efficient LEDs (“light emitting diodes”) transmit data allowing access to the internet at much faster and much more secure means. Only those with direct access to the light-transmission can get the signal.

Moreover, the visible light spectrum exceeds that of radio frequency by a magnitude of 10,000, and ‘Li-fi’ has virtually no limits. Already, transmission rates of 10 gigabytes per second have been demonstrated – 250 times the speed of even the fastest current broadband connection. Furthermore, it is projected this mode of communication will accomplish all of this at approximately one-tenth the cost of Wi-Fi because the light doubles as an illumination and data transmission source.

The fixture’s LEDs flash on and off, creating the binary codes that are the basis of all data. This happens at such an incredible rate of speed however (measured in nanoseconds) that the human eye cannot perceive it. Thus, the LED fixtures are still practical for interior lighting.

One American company – LVX System – has positioned itself as the nation’s leader in Visible Light Communication Technology.

And who better than National Electrical Contractors Association (NECA) and the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW) to install these complex systems? While a couple years old, the NECA/IBEW team has produced a two-part mini-documentary on the background, development and realization of the Li-Fi network that you can view here and here.