What is Li-Fi? Everything you need to know

Li-Fi claims to be 100 times faster than standard Wi-Fi. But what exactly is it and how does it work?

Most households in the UK will have a broadband connection and a lot of those houses will also have experienced connection or speed issues.

But what if there was a way to connect to the internet and benefit from a direct connection with much faster speeds? Enter Li-Fi. 

Li-Fi stands for Light Fidelity and is a Visible Light Communications (VLC) system which runs wireless communications that travel at very high speeds.

With Li-Fi, your light blub is essentially your router. It uses common household LED light bulbs to enable data transfer, boasting speeds of up to 224 gigabits per second.

The term Li-Fi was coined by University of Edinburgh Professor Harald Haas during a TED Talk in 2011. Haas envisioned light bulbs that could act as wireless routers.

Subsequently, in 2012 after four years of research, Haas set up company pureLiFi with the aim 'to be the world leader in Visible Light Communications technology'.