While wireless connectivity is a given these days, the term “Wi-Fi” doesn’t actually stand for what many of us think it does.
If you shake your head and say that Wi-Fi stands for “wireless fidelity,” you’re wrong, because the term itself doesn’t really mean anything. Instead, it was created by the brand consultancy Interbrand as a pun on the word hi-fi (short for high fidelity).
According to a report by the Huffington Post (opens in new tab)and spotted by PC Gamer (opens in new tab)even the US military believed for a long time that Wi-Fi stood for wireless reliability, so don’t feel bad if you get the answer wrong.
The fact that Wi-Fi doesn’t stand for wireless reliability is interesting enough in itself, but the story of how we discovered it might surprise you too.
“The standard for wireless reliability”
In a message on the site Boing Boing (opens in new tab) from all the way back in 2005, sci-fi author and blogger Cory Doctrow explained that Phil Belanger, one of the founding members of the Wi-Fi alliancesaid in an interview that “Wi-Fi stands for nothing,” nor is it an acronym.
Both the term wifi and the ying yang style logo were created by Interbrand, as we mentioned above. Before Wi-Fi was released to consumers in 1997, the founders of the Wireless Ethernet Compatibility Alliance (now the Wi-Fi Alliance) hired Intrabrand to come up with the name and logo for this new form of wireless connectivity.
Wi-Fi was originally called IEEE802.1, which refers to a set of standards for communication over wireless local area networks or WLANs. Because IEEE802.1 was neither easy to remember nor catchy, the Wi-Fi Alliance turned to Interbrand for help, as the brand consultancy was responsible for creating “Prozac”, “Compaq” and many other well-known brands.
The reason the term wireless reliability began to be used is due to the fact that Belanger’s colleagues were scared and, in his opinion, misunderstood branding or marketing. They just couldn’t imagine using the name Wi-Fi without some sort of literal explanation.
This led to a compromise, and the founding members of the Wi-Fi Alliance agreed to include the slogan “The Standard for Wireless Fidelity” next to the Wi-Fi name. Interbrand even suggested the group a list of 10 names; if things had turned out differently, Wi-Fi today would be known as Skybridge, Torchlight, Transpeed, Elevate, or even Flyover.
Wi-Fi standards over the years
Since its launch in 1997, Wi-Fi has gone through many changes and iterations adding new features, improvements and better download speeds.
Although the first five generations of Wi-Fi were not numbered, in 2018 the Wi-Fi Alliance decided to introduce numbers to indicate which equipment supports the latest standard.
The first generation of Wi-Fi supported the 802.11 IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers) standard and had a maximum speed of 1-2 Mbps. With the next generation (802.11b), the download speed was boosted to 1-11 Mbps, but it wasn’t until the release of 802.11a (6-54 Mbps) that the 5 Ghz band was first introduced.
While 802.11n (72-600 Mbps) went back to using just the 2.4 GHz band, 802.11n was the first to use both the 2.4 and 5 GHz bands simultaneously. From here on, 802.11ac (retroactively referred to as Wi-Fi 5) was released in 2014, followed by Wi-Fi 6 in 2019 and then just a year later, Wi-Fi 6E in 2020.
If you’ve been waiting to upgrade to one of the best wifi routers or even one of the best mesh routerswould you like to wait a little longer if Wi-Fi 7which has a maximum download speed of 40 Gbps is likely to be released next year.
Wi-Fi is not going anywhere fast
So now you know how Wi-Fi got its name and like other popular terms, it’s here to stay. Of course, there are now numbers for each new generation of wireless standards, but the term itself is ingrained in our increasingly digital lives.
Speaking of the topic, I bet you didn’t know Bluetooth was originally called IEEE 802.15.1. Jim Kardach, an Intel mobile computer engineer, suggested the name it is called today when he read a book about Vikings that featured King Harald Bluetooth Gormsson at the time.
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