Will Li-Fi Be The New Wi-Fi (in Pakistan)?

With Wi-Fi, most internet users thought the ultimate had been achieved in terms of high speed data access. Gone were the dreary days of modems and dialup connections, as Wi-Fi replaced them with the fluidity of blazing fast wireless data connectivity. However, now with the advent of a new technology, dubbed Li-Fi (Light Fidelity), it seems Wi-Fi is year another transient milestone on the high-speed information superhighway. Li-Fi is a bidirectional, high speed and fully networked wireless communication technology that can be used to transmit data at speeds 100 times faster than Wi-Fi.

Professor Harald Haas of the University of Edinburgh is widely credited as being the inventor of Li-Fi technology, and under his leadership, Pure Li-FI ”a spin-out from the University of Edinburgh” became the first commercial provider of Li-Fi services. A new standard called BG Li-Fi is now under development and will provide the basis for Li-fi services on mobiles devices perhaps as early as 2018.

Many companies around the world are eager to work with the new standard and have developed the Li-Fi Consortium, a group which hopes to encourage further maturing of Li-Fi, development in terms of global support infrastructure, as well a setting industry standards for Li-Fi deployments.

The secret to Li-Fi is that, unlike Wi-Fi that works on wireless radio waves, it communicates through rays of light, particularly at the edge of the Ultra Violet and and Infrared spectrums, which are beyond human visual perception. As the light spectrum is 10,000 times larger than the radio frequency spectrum, Li-fi can carry more data (up to 224 gigabits per second) much faster and at one-tenth of the operating cost of Wi-fi, and ultimately, more securely across denser data environments.

Although Li-Fi as a technology still has its problems in terms of low range, lack of infrastructure, high start up costs and signal reliability , most industry pundits are of the opinion that these challenges also dogged Wi-Fi on introduction and that within a few years people might just be see internet browsing in a whole new, albeit invisible, light.

It will be interesting to see what will be the impact of Li-Fi in Pakistan?

By Tariq Zaid Khan

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