Wireless Internet Access Uses Visible Light, Not Radio Waves

An anonymous reader writes to tell us that a company has demonstrated a new form of wireless communication that uses light instead of radio waves. "Its inventor, St. Cloud resident John Pederson, says visible-light embedded wireless data communication is the next step in the evolution of wireless communications, one that will expand the possibilities in phone and computer use. The connection provides Web access with almost no wiring, better security and with speeds more than eight times faster than cable."

Comments

Re:huh?

[The Master Control P]

Use Tempest for Eliza and it'll transmit radio at you for real rather than generating a minor html error :P

Re:Next step??

[snowraver1]

I read an article about this or similar technology several months ago. Sure, light doesn't do through walls, but that could be an advantage. You could setup a wireless network that asctually stops at the building perimiter.

The other article (not sure if this one does didn't read it) indicated that this technology could be incorporated into LED lighting. Basically your overhead lighting would become the access point. There would be recievers in the room as well that would pick up your transmissions and presumably put them on some sort of physical media (cat6, fibre). Pretty neat, but to me sound extremely finicky.

-- Snow.

Re:It's called free space optics

[should_be_linear]

And here is GPL'd design: http://ronja.twibright.com/