WiFi is an essential utility in 2020. When we shut down schools for Covid19 and scaled up from 7 to 11 grade levels of students using Chromebooks at home that was a major struggle for some families. It’s apparent that a number of families -esp. those with younger kids (new Chromebook recipients) or free/reduced status live in a “digital desert”. Subsidized housing /trailer parks here don’t have WiFi. For many of these families paying rent and putting food on the table is a major struggle. Busses are a creative option but we don’t have a good “unlimited data” provider for hotspots. One hotspot loaned out had 130GB of use for the month. It was used for two students and 6 additional family members.
The choice to sat “WiFi” rather than “internet” made me pause too, but in this case I think it is appropriate. If you only have access to a cheap laptop or tablet, a wired or cellular connection on its own won’t help you get to the information you need. WiFi is now the lowest common denominator of internet access, and that’s worth recognizing.
You’re right about cheap laptops, but there are still (AFAICT) plenty or WiFi-only chromebooks, which is the big thing in education. Also tablets, kindles, nintendos...
I agree with the suggestion that using the cellular network is the way to go, I just think that turning that cellular data into WiFi will allow more devices to connect, and more freedom in how people choose to use their connection. So I would suggest portable cellular-to-WiFi routers rather than building the cellular connection into a laptop.
None of my Chromebooks or MacBooks have ever had an Ethernet port. I have a somewhat older Lenovo that has one, as does a monster 17" Alienware. But they're definitely not common in any portable devices.
Both those examples are cases of what often tends to happen with new terms. They're capitalized and often hyphenated (rather than making up a new word).
But over time, you end up with something like "Open Source Big Data products delivered over the Internet" which gets pretty silly or you have hyphens all over the place which look pretty ugly. Where I work, our style is to generally eliminate both whenever possible.
I guess WiFi is properly Wi-Fi but hardly anyone uses that these days.
I don't think anyone is trying to draw a distinction about how the term Wi-Fi is stylized. (My own usage is what Google decides to use for voice dictation). The question being posed is whether we use 'Wi-Fi' as a term meaning internet access.
And like email and internet, I'm ambivalent (as long as in the case of a publisher there's internal consistency) - this is about the meaning of wifi/WiFi/Wi-Fi, whether it's WLAN or WAN.
