What if every light bulb in the world could also transmit data? Imagine using your car headlights to transmit data. By flickering the light from a single LED, a change too quick for the human eye to detect.

By using OFDM (orthogonal frequency division multiplexing), which allows it to vary the intensity of the LED’s output at a very fast rate we can transmit far more data than a cellular tower and do it in a way that’s more efficient, secure and widespread.

Harald Hass, professor of engineering at Edinburgh University has been studying ways to communicate electronic data signals that pack more data onto existing networks.