The encyclopedia · Software & IT · Technical decision · 1985–1999
Wi-Fi beat proprietary networks by agreeing on one open radio standard.
Instead of each vendor's own wireless link, NCR pushed an open IEEE 802.11 standard on the unlicensed band so every vendor's card could interoperate.
NCR Corporation · IEEE
the move
In the 1980s NCR's retail customers kept moving cash registers as they changed their floor plans, and every move meant re-running cables across marble floors to reconnect the registers to the computers. A radio link could replace all that cabling, and NCR saw the FCC's 1985 decision opening the ISM band to unlicensed use as the opening.
The danger was fragmentation: if each maker shipped its own wireless protocol, equipment from different vendors would not interoperate and the market would stay small. Vic Hayes, the first chair of the IEEE 802.11 group, worked a standardization fight where small firms wanted frequency hopping and big ones wanted direct sequence until a single standard was settled.
The first IEEE 802.11 standard, finalized in 1997, gave radios about 2 Mbps in the 2.4 GHz band, and NCR and AT&T's earlier WaveLAN was a direct precursor. Once every vendor operated on the same unlicensed rules, the technology could be built on volume, which is where the cost and reach followed.
why it works
- Unlicensed spectrum let anyone use the airwaves without a government licence.
- A common protocol meant a laptop could connect to any vendor's base station.
- An open standard lowered cost by letting the whole industry build on one spec.
- Standardization turned a niche cable replacement into a universal network.
what transfers
When no single vendor can win alone, a shared standard can be the solution: agree on the rules and the whole market gets to scale.
what came after
The 1999 extensions raised Wi-Fi's speed and price performance, Apple brought it to consumers, and the open standard became the world's default way to connect wirelessly. Wi-Fi founded on a shared spec and unlicensed spectrum now carries a large share of internet traffic.
references
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