The Fraunhofer Heinrich Hertz Institute presents the latest developments on Visible Light Communication (VLC) at CeBiT 2012, using standard off-the-shelf LEDs to provide broadband data streams to connected devices.
The Fraunhofer system reaches maximum speeds of up 800 Mbit/s under laboratory conditions. In comparison, current broadband capacity reaces 100 Mbit/s.
As an optical technology it is also ideal for places where WLAN is not desirable (such as hospitals), and can handle all sorts of applications-- from video conferencing to general internet use.