If you are firmly convinced that the acronym Wi-Fiis the abbreviation of Wireless Fidelityyou have to think again because in reality Wi-Fi has nothing to do with “wireless fidelity” (a term that by the way makes no sense). Much more simply this acronym, which refers to a set of technologies for exchanging data between wireless devices, It was chosen for marketing reasonsinspired by the term Hi-Fi from the music world. But then, how did this commercial name come about and why do so many continue to believe that it is an acronym? In essence, the term Wi-Fi was suggested by a company specializing in branding and over time the belief spread that Wi-Fi meant Wireless Fidelity following a misunderstanding that arose from the first advertisements promoting the standard IEEE 802.11b Direct Sequence.
How the name Wi-Fi came about
To answer this question we need to go back in time, to the 1999when it was founded WECA (Wireless Ethernet Compatibility Alliance), an organization (now known as Wi-Fi Alliance), which was tasked with promoting a unified standard for high-speed wireless local area networks, the so-called IEEE 802.11b Direct Sequence. It was an innovative technology for the time, which had only one “defect”: the name “IEEE 802.11b Direct Sequence” was too complex to remember and not suitable for mass diffusion. In other words, it was not a term “pop”.
For this reason, WECA decided to turn to the branding company Interbrandwhich produced various proposals, including Skybridge, Dragonfly and, of course, Wi-Fi, accompanied by an attractively designed logo inspired by the yin-yang symbol. The choice of the WECA council fell on Wi-Fi, as we well know, which appreciated so much the commercial name with which to promote the IEEE 802.11b Direct Sequence standard, that it decided to also change the name of the organization itself to Wi-Fi Alliance. To sum up, then, the choice of the name Wi-Fi was a purely marketing choice.
Why People Think Wi-Fi Means Wireless Fidelity
Understanding what the real meaning of Wi-Fi is, there is still a question that needs to be answered: Why do people think Wi-Fi stands for Wireless Fidelity? You should know that in the early 2000s, WECA added a slogan that is presumably at the genesis of the false belief we told you about in the article. The slogan in question, used to advertise Wi-Fi, in fact proclaimed: “The Standard for Wireless Fidelity” (that is to say “The standard for wireless fidelity”). The idea behind this slogan was to evoke a high-quality connection, a bit like the term Hi-Fi (i.e. “high fidelity”) used in the music field to indicate high-quality audio systems.
As he recalled Phil Belangerone of the founders of WECA, this slogan was «wrong on so many levels». Not only did it not reflect the true meaning of the technology, but the concept of “wireless fidelity” also made no sense. In fact, the Wi-Fi Alliance abandoned it in 2000, but the misconception that Wi-Fi was an acronym continued to infiltrate pop culture to this day.
