This technique works and is in fact quite simple. I suspect it's simply a matter of competing business interests that it hasn't been tried before. Even near vi

This technique works and is in fact quite simple. I suspect it's simply a matter of competing business interests that it hasn't been tried before. Even near visible laser communication systems can operate at harmless power levels for miles, can be aligned by hand in many cases (you provide a "collection" dish to reflect the light in) and they're dirt cheap. I actually built one as a project in my required EE classes for my CS degree back in 2002 using a pair of (rather expensive and overpowered) helium neon lasers. In 2002 and with these lasers the speed we had build was quite slow because of the switching time for the lasers, but the point was to build the hardware so we were good. Given the absurdly low cost of these systems w/ modern components and their phenomenally low power budget, I'm not surprised.