“What does Wi-Fi stand for?”
If you’re going to a coffee shop or restaurant you say “do
you have Wi-Fi” what you’re simply meaning is do you have a wireless internet
connection? But according to PhilBelanger, who is a founding member of the
Wi-Fi Alliance, formerly known as the Wireless Ethernet Compatibility Alliance,
or W.E.C.A. for short, Wi-Fi doesn’t actually stand for anything.
It’s not an abbreviation, it’s not an acronym, it’s not short for anything, it’s not some
inside joke that they have... its nothing. They just made it up for the purpose
of branding. The Wi-Fi Alliancehired a company called Interbrand who is
responsible for names you’ve probably heard of like Compaq, the Nissan Xterra,
Prozac among other things to come up with a name and a logo that they could use
for branding purposes or for marketing purposes.
Off a list of 10 to 13 names the
Wi-Fi Alliance chose “Wi-Fi” so they didn’t have to use IEEE.802.11B as the name
which was a great call because Wi-Fi is a heck of a lot easier to remember than
IEEE.802.11B...dot. They almost ran with the name Trapeze which, if you think
about, it is kind of odd because if they did then we would walk into a place and
ask, “Uh..hi...do you have a Trapeze connection?”“Ah, great! Is it free?” “Oh,
hey sorry what’s your Trapeze password... the password for your trapeze?” “Oh, I
have to pay...oh, I thought you said it was free.” Or maybe society would have
shortened it to something else but either way, it goes I think Wi-Fi sounds a lot
better than Trapeze anyway, good choice guys.
Anyways, the story goes something
like this, the Wi-Fi Alliance needed to brand their technology so they called
Interbrand. Interbrand presented them with a list of 10 to 13 names and the
Wi-Fi Alliance chose Wi-Fi.
The folks at the Wi-Fi Alliance couldn’t handle
moving forward with a made-up name that didn’t have any explanation at all so
they gave it the meaning was the tagline of “The standard for wireless fidelity”,
and now everybody confused... way to go guys. After Wi-Fi got a little more
mainstream they dropped the meaningless tagline and left it with a stand-alone
name, WiFi. They expected the whole wireless fidelity thing to just fade away
once they dropped the tagline off but, it didn’t work out the way you thought
it was going to do it, guys?
If you ask around a lot of people, like me
until now, I still think that it stands for wireless fidelity. Seriously you can
go ask around and I guarantee somebody is gonna say that it stands for wireless
fidelity. So when somebody asks you what Wi-Fi stands for you can say, “nothing,
why does everything gotta stand for something they probably just made it up.”
and you will be correct and you can just sit there basking in it while they hop on
Google and try to prove you wrong.
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