Faster Than Fiber

A Virginia-based telecommunications company, Giga Beam, has developed WiFiber, a wireless high-speed data transferring system that can stream 90 minutes of video from one point to another in as little as six seconds. Blasting beams of data through free space is not a new idea. LightPointe and Proxim Wireless also provide such services. What makes GigaBeam's technology different is that it exploits a different part of the electromagnetic spectrum. Their systems use a region of the spectrum near visible light, at terahertz frequencies. Because of this, weather conditions in which visibility is limited, such as fog or light rain, can hamper data transmission.