Two new wireless technologies were unveiled to the public in the last few weeks. Harald Haas, speaking at TED Global, demonstrated wireless through LED lighting–basically fiber optics without the fiber. The Haas demonstration is impressive and the technology appears to be close to market for local operations, such as a building, although it is unclear to me how the signal is intended to reach the socket over distance (broadband over power lines has proven difficult to implement). Here is Haas at TED:

Meanwhile Steve Perlman of Rearden Labs (yes, that Rearden) says his new DIDO technology breaks Shannon’s Law by at least 100 times–do note that these are fighting words, it isn’t called a law for nothing. What appears to be most impressive about the Perlman technology is that it is capable of being used over significant distances. We have yet to see a demonstration at large scale, however.

Business Week has a puffy but still fascinating profile of Perlman which includes this bit: