A faster and more secure wireless technology may soon change the way people use the Internet, as scientists have successfully tested the Wi-Fi alternative, Li-Fi, in laboratory and industrial environments that has reached 224 gigabits per second of speed. Li-Fi could allow users to access the Internet via LED light bulbs in households or offices.

In recent trials in offices and industrial environments in Tallinn, Estonia, scientists claim that the technology is capable to achieve a speed of 1GB per second, 100 times faster than the average Wi-Fi speed.

Li-Fi offers more benefits than Wi-Fi aside from faster data. The wireless technology was designed with light that cannot pass through walls, making the connection much more secure and promoting less interference between devices, according to IBTimes U.K.

In lab tests earlier in 2015, Li-Fi was able to achieve a speed of 224 gigabits per second. This could possibly allow users to download 18 movies of 1.5 GB each every single second, ScienceAlert reported.

"Currently we have designed a smart lighting solution for an industrial environment where the data communication is done through light,” Deepak Solanki, CEO of Estonian tech company, Velmenni, told IBTimes U.K. The company is setting up a Li-Fi network in an office of a private client for its pilot project.

The new technology was invented in 2011 by Harald Haas from the University of Edinburgh in Scotland. Haas has found that flickering light from a single LED could boost data transmission much faster than a cellular tower.

"All we need to do is fit a small microchip to every potential illumination device and this would then combine two basic functionalities: illumination and wireless data transmission," Haas said in his 2011 TED talk.

Li-Fi works like an advanced form of Morse code that switches a torch on and off to deliver a message through a pattern. The technology uses visible light communication (VLC), flicking a LED on and off that allows transmission of things in binary code at extreme speeds.

Haas and his team reportedly have launched the company PureLiFi that offers a plug-and-play application for secure wireless Internet access with a capacity of 11.5 MB per second, according to a report in The Conversation. Furthermore to the introduction of Li-Fi, the French tech company Oledcomm is currently working to install Li-Fi technology in local hospitals.

However, Li-Fi is still far from completely replacing Wi-Fi, but Haas believes that "in the future we will not only have 14 billion light bulbs, we may have 14 billion Li-Fis deployed worldwide for a cleaner, greener, and even brighter future."

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