Days in the Life of Mo

Picture this: you’re sitting under your bedroom light, scrolling, streaming, doom-scrolling again, and somewhere between a cat video and a tech tutorial, your lightbulb, not your WiFi router, is what’s keeping you online.

Sounds like something out of a futuristic IKEA catalog, right?
“Now with Bluetooth speakers, dimmable hues, and 100 Mbps internet.”

But that future is a lot closer than you think. And it has a name: LiFi.

So, What Exactly Is LiFi?

LiFi, short for Light Fidelity, is wireless internet delivered through light waves instead of radio waves (like WiFi uses). It was first introduced by Professor Harald Haas from the University of Edinburgh in 2011, when he famously streamed video using only an LED bulb during his TED Talk .

In short: your LED light blinks so fast (millions of times per second, too fast for human eyes to see) that those tiny flickers can carry data. The receiver, like a phone or a LiFi-enabled laptop, picks up that light signal and translates it into internet. Boom. You’re connected.

And before you ask, yes, that means if you turn off the light, your internet literally goes dark.

Why We Might Want Light-Based Internet

The idea sounds wild until you realize WiFi is starting to hit its limits. The more devices we connect, the more crowded the radio spectrum gets, like trying to hold a conversation in a noisy club. LiFi sidesteps that entirely by using the visible light spectrum, which is 10,000 times larger than the radio spectrum.

Translation: more bandwidth, less interference, and speeds that make WiFi blush.

Laboratory tests have already clocked LiFi speeds at 224 Gbps, which is fast enough to download 18 HD movies in a single second. Even real-world implementations, like those tested by Oledcomm in Paris or Signify (formerly Philips Lighting), are already hitting impressive rates in office and defense environments.

So, while my WiFi router wheezes in the corner trying to connect to five devices and my smart plant pot (don’t ask), LiFi is out there… flexing.

The Race Is On

It’s not just one company tinkering with light bulbs and optimism. There’s an actual race happening, and it’s not just for speed.

• Oledcomm installed the first LiFi-equipped classrooms in France back in 2018.
• pureLiFi, co-founded by Haas himself, has developed LiFi defense and aerospace systems.
• Signify has launched Trulifi, a line of commercial LiFi products integrated into office lighting.

Even the U.S. military has joined the conversation, exploring LiFi for secure, interference-free communication in field operations. Because, unlike WiFi, LiFi signals don’t penetrate walls, which means your neighbor can’t hijack your signal (or your binge-watch history).

But There’s a Catch

Of course, it’s not all brightness and bliss. LiFi still faces some serious mood swings:

• Line-of-sight limitations: No light, no internet. Your shadow or a closed door could block the connection.
• Infrastructure costs: We’d need LiFi-compatible bulbs, sensors, and devices everywhere.
• Standardization issues: It’s still in its early commercial phase, think WiFi in 1999 levels of chaos.

But let’s be honest, every great tech started with a “but.” The first mobile phones were huge, the first internet connection made weird fax-machine noises, and the first cloud sounded like a weather forecast.

Give LiFi time. It might just light the way to a new digital era.

So What Happens Next?

Imagine walking into a café and instead of asking, “What’s the WiFi password?”, you look up and say, “Ah yes, I’ll sit under the faster bulb.”

Airlines could stream movies straight through cabin lights. Hospitals could use secure, radiation-free communication systems. Even deep-sea divers could exchange data underwater through LEDs.

This isn’t science fiction, it’s being tested right now in pilot projects across Europe and Asia. The future of connectivity might not be in the airwaves above us… but in the light shining right over our heads.

And maybe, just maybe, one day, I’ll tell my students to stop blaming “load shedding” for slow internet… and start checking if they’ve simply turned off the light.

---

Enjoyed this post?
Stay connected (metaphorically and literally). Subscribe for more curious takes, casual tech chats, and the occasional rant from your favorite developer who still argues with her router.