A green LED has a substrate, a GaN heavily n-doped bottom confining layer, an active region, an upper GaN confinement layer, and a semi-transparent ohmic contact layer. The active region has less than or equal to three highly compressively strained quantum wells. The widths of the quantum wells is less than 3 nm. The active region arrangement provides a short free carrier life-time and hence an increase in the modulation bandwidth of the LED.