What is the difference with using radio waves?
Different spectrum and different way of receiving. Although they both essentially are electromagnetic 'waves' or light.
I think lasers are more focused too, while radio waves travel in all directions, don't they? I mean even the best lasers will diverge at great distance but radio waves even moreso. So I guess unless you have a very accurate laser pointed exactly at a reciever radio waves may have a better chance of actually getting a message across vast distances.
But I'm not a specialist on this subject.
Radio waves actually travel with the speed of light, but I'm not sure if the data encoding allows for the same transmission speed. Travel speed and transmission speed are not necessary the same. Although that's a little hard to explain I guess.