{"id":3116,"date":"2018-10-11T00:04:24","date_gmt":"2018-10-11T00:04:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.styledeals.co.uk\/blog\/how-light-could-help-superfast-mobile-reach-even-further\/"},"modified":"2018-10-11T00:04:24","modified_gmt":"2018-10-11T00:04:24","slug":"how-light-could-help-superfast-mobile-reach-even-further","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.styledeals.co.uk\/blog\/how-light-could-help-superfast-mobile-reach-even-further\/","title":{"rendered":"How light could help superfast mobile reach even further"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<div property=\"articleBody\">\n<figure class=\"media-landscape has-caption full-width lead\"><span class=\"image-and-copyright-container\"><\/p>\n<p>                <img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"js-image-replace\" alt=\"Man holding LED light bulb\" src=\"https:\/\/ichef.bbci.co.uk\/news\/320\/cpsprodpb\/9D08\/production\/_103800204_gettyimages-104462426.jpg\" width=\"976\" height=\"549\"\/><span class=\"off-screen\">Image copyright<\/span><br \/>\n                 <span class=\"story-image-copyright\">Getty Images<\/span><\/p>\n<p>            <\/span><figcaption class=\"media-caption\"><span class=\"off-screen\">Image caption<\/span><br \/>\n                <span class=\"media-caption__text\"><br \/>\n                    Internet connectivity through light waves could help 5G reach into buildings and underground<br \/>\n                <\/span><br \/>\n            <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p class=\"story-body__introduction\">The global race towards superfast &#8220;fifth generation&#8221; mobile internet, known as 5G, is entering a key phase. The trouble is no-one knows exactly which technologies will be best for offering such a service. But one telecoms firm may just have had a light-bulb moment.<\/p>\n<p>At its headquarters in Slough, O2 has installed an unusual demo. It&#8217;s a room where a wireless internet connection is provided not through wi-fi, but li-fi &#8211; a system that transmits data through light waves rather than radio waves.<\/p>\n<p>The mobile operator thinks the system may help to offer 5G speeds in certain locations where getting coverage from an outdoor mobile signal is difficult.<\/p>\n<ul class=\"story-body__unordered-list\">\n<li class=\"story-body__list-item\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/news\/technology-34942685\" class=\"story-body__link\">&#8216;Li-fi 100 times faster than wi-fi&#8217;<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Harald Burchardt of pureLiFi, the firm behind the tech, says ceiling spotlights in the room have been spaced evenly so that their downward, cone-shaped beams can connect to a light-receiving dongle plugged into a tablet computer. <\/p>\n<p>&#8220;We&#8217;re using the light itself,&#8221; he tells me, gesturing at the bulbs above. &#8220;These are flickering at billions of times a second, naked to the human eye.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Li-fi can offer data speeds of up to eight gigabits per second (8Gbps) &#8211; about 400 times faster than the average broadband speed in the UK.<\/p>\n<figure class=\"media-landscape has-caption full-width\"><span class=\"image-and-copyright-container\"><\/p>\n<p>            <\/span><figcaption class=\"media-caption\"><span class=\"off-screen\">Image caption<\/span><br \/>\n                <span class=\"media-caption__text\"><br \/>\n                    Tablets, laptops and phones would need a special dongle to pick up the light signal<br \/>\n                <\/span><br \/>\n            <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>You need only walk a few steps out of the room and the signal drops. Inside, it stays ultra snappy. <\/p>\n<p>Within the ceiling, the light bulbs have been connected to access points that are wired to the internet. If you didn&#8217;t know that, though, you&#8217;d simply think you had walked into a well-lit room. It&#8217;s a much more market-ready version of the technology <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/news\/technology-26245544\" class=\"story-body__link\">demonstrated to the BBC four years ago<\/a>. <\/p>\n<p>So why is O2 considering li-fi as a potential way of offering 5G-style mobile connectivity in indoor spaces? <\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Targeting indoor coverage is a real challenge,&#8221; explains Brendan O&#8217;Reilly, O2&#8217;s chief technology officer.<\/p>\n<p>This is because it is harder for high-frequency, short wavelength 5G radio signals to penetrate walls and windows than 4G radio signals. Despite ostensibly being faster, the 5G signal may actually be less accessible in some places as a result.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Li-fi could be part of a 5G solution. It provides good data rates,&#8221; says Mr O&#8217;Reilly. <\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I don&#8217;t think we&#8217;ll see O2 necessarily offering to make light bulbs themselves, but as part of a solution to a connectivity problem I can see li-fi playing a role in that.&#8221;<\/p>\n<figure class=\"media-with-caption\">\n<div class=\"player-with-placeholder\">\n<p>Media playback is unsupported on your device<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div><figcaption class=\"media-with-caption__caption\"><span class=\"off-screen\">Media caption<\/span>Professor Harald Haas demonstrates his LiFi technology to Rory Cellan-Jones<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>Li-fi could extend mobile connectivity into those hard-to-reach indoor spaces. Or li-fi bulbs could replace streetlights in well-lit urban areas to provide high-speed connections to densely packed crowds of people.<\/p>\n<p>Last year, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.sciencedirect.com\/science\/article\/pii\/S2405428317300151\" class=\"story-body__link-external\">Harald Haas, who coined the term &#8220;li-fi&#8221;, published a paper<\/a> in which he described the technology as a game-changer for 5G, listing a number of potential applications. <\/p>\n<p>It might connect &#8220;internet of things&#8221; devices dotted around a building via light, he argued, offer connectivity to driverless cars moving along roads, or bring super-fast wireless internet to devices in data centres. <\/p>\n<p>And Mr O&#8217;Reilly suggests that hospitals could easily hook up healthcare devices to the local network without having to rely on over-burdened wi-fi networks or relying on potentially hazardous cables.<\/p>\n<figure class=\"media-landscape no-caption body-width\"><span class=\"image-and-copyright-container\"><\/p>\n<p>            <\/span><\/p>\n<\/figure>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/news\/business-45489065\" class=\"story-body__link\">More 5G stories and features<\/a><\/p>\n<figure class=\"media-landscape no-caption body-width\"><span class=\"image-and-copyright-container\"><\/p>\n<p>            <\/span><\/p>\n<\/figure>\n<p>Prof Dimitra Simeonidou at the University of Bristol says li-fi could help in places where radio-based connectivity is challenged &#8211; such as in train tunnels.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;When you are having the train go through the tunnel there is very little space around it, so that will definitely disturb radio signals,&#8221; she explains. <\/p>\n<p>Providing a seamless mobile signal to passengers on a train journey or to those using an underground rail network could be made possible with internet-enabled tunnel lighting, she says.<\/p>\n<p>But li-fi is not ready to light up the 5G roll-out just yet. <\/p>\n<p>&#8220;To make it work sensibly, it needs to be a bit like wi-fi, it needs to be ubiquitous,&#8221; says Prof William Webb, independent consultant and author of The 5G Myth.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;It needs to be in-built to lots and lots of devices.&#8221;<\/p>\n<figure class=\"media-landscape has-caption full-width\"><span class=\"image-and-copyright-container\"><\/p>\n<p>                 <span class=\"off-screen\">Image copyright<\/span><br \/>\n                 <span class=\"story-image-copyright\">Getty Images<\/span><\/p>\n<p>            <\/span><figcaption class=\"media-caption\"><span class=\"off-screen\">Image caption<\/span><br \/>\n                <span class=\"media-caption__text\"><br \/>\n                    Li-fi only works within the cone of light. Move beyond and you lose connectivity<br \/>\n                <\/span><br \/>\n            <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>For the O2 demo, a dongle was plugged into a tablet to receive the li-fi signal. But for the technology really to take off, these light-reading sensors would have to be built in to devices &#8211; a considerable obstacle. <\/p>\n<p>And the most obvious drawback is that your phone won&#8217;t be able to pick up a signal if it&#8217;s in your pocket or bag. But given how much time we spend staring at our small screens, maybe this wouldn&#8217;t be such an issue.<\/p>\n<p>Prof Webb believes wi-fi networks could be capable of handling demand, despite that being an occasional frustration. <\/p>\n<p>&#8220;It isn&#8217;t really a pressing problem,&#8221; he says.<\/p>\n<p>His scepticism is echoed by Sylvain Fabre, an analyst at market research firm Gartner. He and his colleagues have been tracking the development of li-fi products and their adoption, but they are yet to see a big impact.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;There aren&#8217;t many vendors and there are very few installations,&#8221; he tells me. &#8220;It will be hard to go to economies of scale and get prices to drop.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>But that isn&#8217;t stopping O2 and others from exploring the possibilities. <\/p>\n<p>It might only take one engineer to change a light bulb &#8211; but Harald Haas and pureLiFi will need a lot more than that to change the world of wireless connectivity.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<p><br \/>\n<br \/><a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/news\/business-45811959\">Source<\/a> by <a href=\"\">[author_name]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Image copyright Getty Images Image caption Internet connectivity through light waves could help 5G reach into buildings and underground The global race towards superfast &#8220;fifth generation&#8221; mobile internet, known as 5G, is entering a key phase. The trouble is no-one knows exactly which technologies will be best for offering such a service. But one telecoms &hellip; <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":3117,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3116","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.styledeals.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3116","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.styledeals.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.styledeals.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.styledeals.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3116"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.styledeals.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3116\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.styledeals.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3117"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.styledeals.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3116"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.styledeals.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3116"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.styledeals.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3116"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}