• Email Us: [email protected]
  • Contact Us: +1 718 874 1545
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar

Medical Market Report

  • Home
  • All Reports
  • About Us
  • Contact Us

People Are Just Learning The True Meaning Of The Word Wi-Fi

May 11, 2024 by Deborah Bloomfield

A lot of people (IFLScience included) rely on Wi-Fi every single day, for our jobs, accessing the news, accidentally spending three hours on TikTok – and we can now do so in more places than ever before. But while it might be heading towards ubiquity, how many of us actually know what the term stands for?

There are definitely a few good guesses floating around. The way it’s written would indicate that it’s short for something and the most similar term to be found with that in mind is “hi-fi”, which stands for “high fidelity”. Wi-Fi must stand for “wireless fidelity” then, right?

Advertisement

Wrong (although it’s very reasonable logic). In fact, Wi-Fi actually doesn’t mean anything at all, according to Phil Belanger, a founding member of the Wi-Fi Alliance.

“Wi-Fi doesn’t stand for anything. It is not an acronym. There is no meaning,” said Belanger.

So what does it mean?

It turns out that the term Wi-Fi was magicked up by marketing firm Interbrand, who were tasked with coming up with a name that would be memorable to everyone. After all, the technical term for it was IEEE 802.11 – all well and good if you know what technical standards are, but not exactly the catchiest name in the world.

Interbrand brought the Wi-Fi Alliance a list of 10 different names, but in the end, Wi-Fi was the winner. What it stood for wasn’t meant to have a direct meaning; it was more about what it would conjure up in consumers’ heads.

Advertisement

“We proposed the name Wi-Fi, as customers told us that its similarities to the already widely understood concept, hi-fi, short for “high fidelity” helped them grasp the concept,” said Interbrand. “The name reflects that, even without cables, Wi-Fi delivers a high-quality, lossless connection wherever you go.”

Why has the “wireless fidelity” myth persisted?

So Wi-Fi and hi-fi sound similar and elicit similar thoughts about the products they represent, but according to Belanger, there’s more to why some people are so adamant that Wi-Fi means wireless fidelity.

“The only reason that you hear anything about “Wireless Fidelity” is some of my colleagues in the group were afraid. They didn’t understand branding or marketing. They could not imagine using the name “Wi-Fi” without having some sort of literal explanation,” Belanger explained. “So we compromised and agreed to include the tag line “The Standard for Wireless Fidelity” along with the name.”

“It was a clumsy attempt to come up with two words that matched Wi and Fi. That’s it.”

Advertisement

That tag line was later dropped by the Wi-Fi Alliance after Wi-Fi began to grow in success, but clearly it’s got some long-lasting sticking power when it comes to popular thought.

Deborah Bloomfield
Deborah Bloomfield

Related posts:

  1. Bolivian president calls for global debt relief for poor countries
  2. Five Seasons Ventures pulls in €180M fund to tackle human health and climate via FoodTech
  3. Humanity’s Journey To A Metal-Rich Asteroid Launches Today. Here’s How To Watch
  4. Ancient DNA Reveals People Caught Leprosy From Adorable Woodland Critters In Medieval England

Source Link: People Are Just Learning The True Meaning Of The Word Wi-Fi

Filed Under: News

Primary Sidebar

  • The “Eyes Of Clavius” Will Be Visible On The Moon Today, Thanks To Clair-Obscur Effect
  • Shockingly High Microplastic Levels Found On Remote Mediterranean Coral Reef Island
  • Interstellar Object, Cheesy Nightmares, And Smooching Orcas
  • World’s Largest Martian Meteorite Up For Auction Could Reach Whopping $2-4 Million
  • Kimalu The Beluga Whale Undergoes Pioneering Surgery And Becomes First Beluga To Survive General Aesthetic
  • The 1986 Soviet Space Mission That’s Never Been Repeated: Mir To Salyut And Back Again
  • Grisly Incident In Yellowstone National Park Shows Just How Dangerous This Vibrant Wilderness Can Be
  • Out Of All Greenhouse Gas Emitters On Earth, One US Organization Takes The Biscuit
  • Overly Ambitious Adder Attempts To Eat Hare 10 Times Its Mass In Gnarly Video
  • How Fast Does A Spacecraft Need To Go To Escape The Solar System?
  • President Trump’s Cuts To USAID Could Result In A “Staggering” 14 Million Avoidable Deaths By 2030
  • Dzo: Hybrids Beasts That Are Perfectly Crafted For Life On Earth’s Highest Mountains
  • “Rarest Event Ever” Had A Half-Life 1 Trillion Times Longer Than The Age Of The Universe – How Did We See It?
  • Meet The Bille, A Self-Righting Tetrahedron That Nobody Was Sure Could Exist
  • Neurogenesis Confirmed: Adult Brains Really Do Make New Hippocampal Neurons
  • RFK Jr Suggested Letting Bird Flu Run Through Farms – Experts Still Think It’s A Bad Idea
  • “For Unknown Reasons”: Mystery Of The Oldest Human Remains Ever Found In Antarctica
  • Alaska’s Wilderness At Risk As Trump Opens “Up To 82 Percent” Of National Reserve To Drilling
  • “Life-Changing” Gene Therapy Restores Hearing In Deaf Patients Within Weeks After Just One Shot
  • Man Broke Down Wall In His Basement And Discovered An Ancient Underground City That Once Housed 20,000 People
  • Business
  • Health
  • News
  • Science
  • Technology
  • +1 718 874 1545
  • +91 78878 22626
  • [email protected]
Office Address
Prudour Pvt. Ltd. 420 Lexington Avenue Suite 300 New York City, NY 10170.

Powered by Prudour Network

Copyrights © 2025 · Medical Market Report. All Rights Reserved.

Go to mobile version