What does wifi stand

What Does WiFi Actually Stand For? A Brief History…

Most people use WiFi every single day. Whether at home, at work, or in your local coffee shop, WiFi networks are used by billions of people every single day. But most people have NO IDEA what WiFi actually stands for. And if they do think they know, they’re usually wrong.

The history of how the name WiFi came to be is actually a rather interesting one. The most interesting aspect about the genesis of the term WiFi is that, contrary to popular opinion, it DOES NOT mean “wireless fidelity” – although plenty of bonafide geeks will argue it does.

So if WiFi doesn’t mean “wireless fidelity” what does it mean? Let’s investigate this further and get to the bottom of the history and meaning of the word WiFi one and for all…

What Does WiFi Stand For?

Most people assume that WiFi stands for “wireless fidelity” but this isn’t actually the case. The word WiFi itself doesn’t actually mean anything. Why? Simple: there is no such thing as “wireless fidelity”. The phrase WiFi was actually coined by marketing people to refer to the technology that powers wireless networks, IEEE 802.11.

Now, IEEE 802.11 doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue. And it certainly wouldn’t look very nice on big, sprawling marketing campaigns in Times Square and inside glossy, magazine adverts. And this posed a problem. In order to market wireless networks back in the day, the marketing people needed a term that was shorter, sexier, and easy to remember.

Fidelity means – in most cases – loyalty or continued support. Prior to the release of WiFi, internet networks weren’t known for their reliability. WiFi wanted to change this and the marketing people wanted to connote a meaning of trust into the branding of it, so the term Wireless Fidelity was suggested. People liked it, responded well to it in tests, so the name stuck.

But in order to make it look and sound more technical, the term was abbreviated down to WiFi. And the name stuck. But wireless fidelity itself isn’t a thing, it is just a more palatable way of saying IEEE 802.11. And when it comes to marketing, palatable – especially when you’re pushing a new technology – is the name of the game.

What Came Before WiFi?

If you’re old enough to remember a world without WiFi, you’ll know exactly what came before wireless internet. It was called dial-up internet and it worked in much the same way as the internet does now, only with dial-up internet you were stuck at a single terminal – dial-up required a direct connection from the router to your PC.

Dial-up internet worked through your phone line and, for the most part, was painfully slow. How slow? Put it this way: opening an image on dial-up could take as long as five minutes, depending on its size, whereas now images are loaded instantly. Back in the mid to late-90s, though, this was how the internet worked. There was no Google and download speeds were appalling.

Oh, and if someone was using the internet in your home, you couldn’t use the house phone. This fact alone made dial-up internet one of the biggest causes of arguments between parents and teenagers during the years 1995 to 2000. As someone that personally lived through this, I can only tell you that it was problematic.

During the early-2000s, broadband and WiFi began to become more popular, gradually replacing dial-up internet. The jump in speeds from dial-up internet to broadband was significant. In fact, this single change probably generated trillions of dollars alone for the global economies – it made entire economies run faster.

Dial-Up vs Broadband Speeds – What’s The Difference?

Dial-up internet speeds were limited, but not just with respect to its overall speed. Most dial-up routers could only handle internet speeds of 56K, thanks to the nature of telephone systems. But if the internet was to succeed, things had to change. And this is where broadband came into the mix.

With broadband, the internet was delivered in a completely different way – although it still used phone lines. You could browse the internet AND use your house phone. And this new form of internet allowed ISPs to start improving internet speeds by as much as 1000% inside a few short years.

And then, of course, came mobile data for phones, starting with 1G and then progressing to where we are now with the rise of 5G which, inside the next few years, could begin topping previously unheard of speeds, making 4K gaming on the go as easy as streaming a movie at home.

Broadband and dial-up Internet connections differ in a number of ways. While both employ telephone lines, broadband doesn’t share a line with a telephone. Users aren’t deprived of the use of their telephone while using the Internet and there’s no payment to the phone company for the amount of time spent on an Internet connection. In fact, with a broadband connection, the Internet connection is constant – once installed, the connection is never broken, so that all a user needs to do is open a browser window; no time is lost establishing a connection.

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Faster Internet is Better Internet

What’s the moral of the story here? It’s pretty simple: faster internet, whether you’re talking about it at home or on your phone, is better internet. Speed has always been at the heart of the internet, getting more of it, and the applications and uses that are born from it. Without fast download speeds, we wouldn’t have Netflix streaming or things like YouTube.

And fast internet for your home has never been cheaper either. You can now access ultra-fast broadband for a fraction of the cost that it used to be, unlocking speeds of 1Gbps in some areas. And if you have 1Gbps internet, you’ll never need to worry about speed again.

Internet Slang: A Glossary

WFH	EOBD
KPOP	FOMO
LFWFPB	WDYM
LFG	NFT
HYD	IG
HBU	WiFi
iOS	FUD
TBA	HODL
ASL	XMAS
IYKYK	Yeet
XOXO	NSFW
SMH	IIRC

Additional Resources

• WiFi 6 vs WiFi 6E – What’s The Difference?
• Explained: What Is The Difference Between Wifi Boosters, Repeaters & Extenders?
• What is WiFi 7? And How Fast Will It Be? Let’s Find Out…
• What is 5G WiFi Broadband? Everything You Need to Know
• WiFi 6 Explained: Why You’ll 100% Want It Inside Your Next Phone…
• How To Change WiFi Channel (And Get Faster Internet)

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What does Wi-Fi stand for?

Wi-Fi became a ubiquitous technology in laptops more than a decade ago and the phrase is in daily use. Now the wireless networking technology can be found in our watches, phones, televisions and smart speakers. We know what it means, but what does Wi-Fi stand for?

You may have read, or made an educated guess, that Wi-Fi stands for “wireless fidelity” just as Hi-Fi stands for “high fidelity”. It would make sense but you’d be wrong.

Phil Belanger, a founding member of the Wi-Fi Alliance, has comprehensively dispelled the idea: “Wi-Fi doesn’t stand for anything. It is not an acronym. There is no meaning.”

The simple truth is that the organisation needed a name for their standard that would be easier to remember than “IEEE 802.11b Direct Sequence”. So they hired the marketing agency Interbrand to name it and were given the choice of 10 options.

Belanger does concede that the organisation did, in the early days of Wi-Fi, include the tag line “The Standard for Wireless Fidelity”. This was because board members found it hard to imagine having a name that didn’t mean anything and wanted to subsequently explain the name that had been invented for them, but Belanger says it was a mistake to do it, and the line was quickly dropped.

What is Wi-Fi?

For many people the term Wi-Fi is now synonymous with “Internet”. But to be accurate it’s just a wireless connection standard. If you’re using a wireless device then Wi-Fi may be bringing you your internet connection, but it is not the internet.

Wi-Fi is essentially a very advanced digital radio using frequencies between 2 gigahertz and 5 gigahertz in the electromagnetic spectrum, which is around the same area as microwave ovens.

Who invented Wi-Fi?

A wireless network called ALOHAnet was created in 1971 that connected the Great Hawaiin islands. Ethernet and Wi-Fi can trace some of their history back to that.

But it was in 1991 that NCR Corporation (which began as a cash register company) and AT&T (which began as a phone company) created the precursor to Wi-Fi as a way of linking cash registers called WaveLAN.

It became so popular that eventually the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) created the 802.11 standard that we now know as Wi-Fi. In 1999, the Wi-Fi Alliance formed as a trade association to hold the reins of the Wi-Fi trademark.

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What Does WiFi Stand For?

What does WiFi stand for? Well, everyone knows that. It stands for wireless fidelity. Right?

Wrong. But good guess! It’s a misconception that has been plaguing the ubiquitous term since its very beginning. In fact, few things that are so widely used are as widely misunderstood in terms of naming.

What does WiFi stand for? We bet you’ll be surprised.

Imagine Connect to ‘Free Public IEEE 802.11’

Let’s go back to the beginning. Before wireless came along, the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) had success in defining standards for Ethernet technology through a committee called 802.3. To do the same for wireless, a separate committee called 802.11 was established.

The process was a long one, and in 1999, six companies joined forces to form the Wireless Ethernet Compatibility Alliance (WECA) to streamline standardization for the emerging industry.

Once they had everything in place, they just needed a consumer-friendly brand name and logo for their efforts because, let’s face it, “IEEE802.11b compliant” wasn’t going to be a winner.

According to Phil Belanger, a founding member of the Alliance, they hired brand consultancy Interbrand “to come up with the name and logo that we could use for our interoperability seal and marketing efforts. We needed something that was a little catchier than ‘IEEE 802.11b Direct Sequence.’

“Interbrand created ‘Prozac,’ ‘Compaq,’ ‘oneworld,’ ‘Imation’ and many other brand names that you have heard of. They even created the company name ‘Vivato.’”

Thanks to Interbrand, Wi-Fi – and its corresponding yin yang-inspired logo – was born. The official trademarked term is “Wi-Fi,” and the Alliance only uses and recognizes it written that way. For the rest of us, “WiFi” and “wifi” are commonly used as well.

‘Wireless Fidelity’ is Not a Thing

The way that Belanger and other original members of the group tell it, Wi-Fi was chosen from a list of 10 options from Interbrand that also included names like “FlankSpeed” and “DragonFly.”

At the time, the term “Hi-Fi,” short for high fidelity, was becoming popular to describe high sound quality in speakers and televisions.

The public was already familiar with the similar term, and group members agreed to go with Wi-Fi. Except that some in the Alliance were worried that they needed a literal definition for their catchy name, and a tagline was later added that only added to the confusion: “The Standard for Wireless Fidelity.”

The tagline was eventually dropped, and Belanger, for his part, would rather that people forget all about it. But the damage was done. Which is why when you ask early adopters, “what does WiFi stand for?” they answer: “wireless fidelity.”

Role of the Wi-Fi Alliance Today

WECA is now the Wi-Fi Alliance, and while its mandate has evolved over time, its mission has remained much the same. Its vision statement says it all: “Connecting everyone and everything, everywhere.”

Membership has grown from the original six – Intersil, 3Com, Nokia, Aironet, Symbol and Lucent – to include hundreds of the largest tech and telecommunications companies in the world. Consumers and companies can search the site for Wi-Fi certified products in eight categories.

So What Does WiFi Stand For?

Now you know the truth: nothing. It wasn’t intended as an abbreviation, people just liked the sound of it.

So the next time you find yourself cursing poor connectivity or wishing you knew how to boost WiFi signal, take a deep breath and be grateful you aren’t looking for a way to extend your IEEE 802.11 range (but to learn about how to extend WiFi range, click here).

Did you think WiFi was short for «wireless fidelity?» We’d love to hear your thoughts – leave a comment below!

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