Wireless technology provides the ability to communicate between two or more entities over distances without the use of wires or cables of any sort. This includes communications using radio frequency (RF) as well as infrared (IR) waves.

An early form of wireless technology, the radio receiver opened the door for more advanced capabilities such as cellular and digital communications.

The birth of wireless technology started with the discovery of electromagnetic waves by Heinrich Hertz (1857–1894). Guglielmo Marconi (1874–1937) established the very first commercial RF communications, the wireless telegraph, in the late 1890s—more than fifty years after the first commercial wired telegraph service that was demonstrated in 1832 by Samuel F. B. Morse (1791–1872). Marconi was also the first to transmit radio signals to a mobile receiver on ships in the early 1900s. Wireless technology has always been preceded by wired technology and is usually more expensive, but it has...