Wi-Fi is not Wireless Fidelity

Saw a very informative post over at Davao Wi-Fi Hot spots regarding what Wi-Fi means.

Wi-Fi is Wi-Fi and “Wi” and “Fi” doesn’t stand for anything (separately). Its a coined term which should mean IEEE 802.11. And it doesn’t stand for “Wireless Fidelity“

So I searched some more and found more details about this confusion.

The truth is, Wi-Fi isn’t short for anything—and it never was.

Here’s what happened:

In 1999, a handful of industry leaders formed a global non-profit organization with the goal of “driving the adoption of a single worldwide-accepted standard for high-speed wireless local area networking.” They called themselves the “Wireless Ethernet Compatibility Alliance (WECA).”

Because ‘IEEE 802.11′ is a bit of a mouthful, one of WECA’s first tasks was to develop a more memorable, user-friendly name for the wireless standard. To that end, they hired powerhouse branding company Interbrand — the company responsible for naming Prozac, Celebrex, the Mitsubishi Eclipse, and the Nissan Xterra, just to name a few — to come up with a list of names that could be used in place of IEEE 802.11b.

Thirteen names were presented to WECA, including Skybridge, Torchlight, and Flyover. Despite how lame these names sound in retrospect, Interbrand is actually very good at its job. Its naming strategy for IBM, for instance, saved the company more than $4,000,000 in one year. And among forgettable names such as Transpeed and Elevate, there was, obviously, a winner: Wi-Fi.

Interestingly enough, when the WECA board got together to discuss the names, the one that received the highest score was Trapeze (now the name of a Wi-Fi infrastructure company). Close behind and tied for second were Dragonfly, Hornet and Wi-Fi. Had any of the other top contenders won out, rather than using a Wi-Fi-enabled device, today you would be using your Trapeze- or Dragonfly-enabled device to check e-mail or download a video. Trapeze, of course, would not be considered “short for wireless fidelity.” Neither would “Dragonfly.” That’s because they’re not. They would stand in for IEEE 802.11—just like Wi-Fi does.

Phil Belanger, analyst with Novarum and a co-founder of WECA (which later became the Wi-Fi Alliance), remembers those meetings well.

“Some of the names were hilarious and horrible,” recalls Belanger. “We almost said, ‘Go back to the drawing board.’ Wi-Fi won out. When we saw it with the yin-yang logo, we thought, ‘Yeah, this is good.’ One of the funny things was — this may sound silly now — but at the time, it was going from two to eleven megabits. That’s really fancy wireless stuff, woo! Maybe half of the names were trying to underscore the idea of speed. You can imagine how dated that would be now if we’d selected one of those.”

Nowhere in the notes from those meetings—or in Belanger’s recollection—was Wi-Fi intended to be short for “wireless fidelity.” Put simply, since there is no such thing as wireless fidelity, nothing could ever be short for it.

The current confusion seems to stem from a brief period early in the days of the Wi-Fi Alliance when a regrettable tag line was added that stated, “The Standard for Wireless Fidelity.” This was not part of the original name and was not created by Interbrand, but it was added as an afterthought in an attempt to help users make sense of the new and somewhat nonsensical word, “Wi-Fi.”

“The tagline is incorrect on so many levels,” says Belanger. “To say ‘the standard’ broke with the charter. We weren’t creating standards — we were promoting an existing standard. One of the motivations was that we were trying to expand the use of WLANs to the home market, so this notion of ‘wireless fidelity,’ some people felt like if they’re going to transfer audio and video around their house, then maybe that has some of the appeal. We have this name Wi-Fi. What two words have “wi” and “fi” starting them? Maybe it can help support our goal?”

By the end of 2000, the pointless tagline was dropped and the term “wireless fidelity” was supposed to disappear into the ether. But somehow, as the Wi-Fi brand gained traction, so did the mistaken notion that it was “short for wireless fidelity.” Despite the fact that Wikipedia claims the Wi-Fi Alliance still uses the term “wireless fidelity” in its white papers, there are only two documents in the Wi-Fi Alliance online knowledge base that use it. They are press releases from the spring and summer of 2000, historical documents that preserve a regrettable phase, much like the photos that preserve our most unfortunate hairstyles or wardrobe choices long after we’ve moved on.

Source and more: Wi-Fi Planet

So i suggest you guys update the meaning of Wi-Fi in your articles.