Wi-Fi does not really stand for anything, and three countries claim its invention
Many people assume Wi-Fi means wireless fidelity. In truth, branding firm Interbrand picked it from ten candidates because it sounded like hi-fi, and because anything was catchier than IEEE 802.11b Direct Sequence. The backstory of the technology is just as tangled, with Australia, the Netherlands and the United States all claiming credit.
The Dutch strand began in 1991 in Nieuwegein, where NCR and AT&T built WaveLAN, a wireless link meant for shop tills. NCR's Vic Hayes and Bell Labs engineer Bruce Tuch then pushed the IEEE to write a standard, and Hayes chaired the 802.11 committee for a decade. The first version, released in 1997, managed 2 megabits per second; 802.11b raised that to 11 in 1999.
Australia's claim runs through the CSIRO, the national science agency. From 1989 a team led by John O'Sullivan worked on wireless networking, building a prototype test bed and lodging a patent in 1992. That patent proved lucrative: settlements brought in 200 million dollars from 14 companies in 2009 and a further 220 million from 23 firms in 2012. In 2016 the prototype was picked as Australia's entry in an exhibition called A History of the World in 100 Objects.
The consumer breakthrough came in 1999, when Apple built the technology into its iBook laptops under the name AirPort, the first mass-market product to offer it. The same year the Wi-Fi Alliance formed to own the trademark and certify gear, and the catchy name was in commercial use by August. The alliance briefly used the slogan The Standard for Wireless Fidelity, which is how the myth took hold.
Wi-Fi rides on bands also used by microwave ovens, opened for unlicensed use by a 1985 American regulatory ruling. Walls cut its range, typically around 20 metres indoors, but that also stops crowded networks trampling each other. Speed has soared: by 2025 the best hardware, at close range, could reach 23 gigabits per second, and over 3 billion Wi-Fi devices were shipping yearly by 2019.
Source: Wi-Fi
