The Mbit vs. Mbyte Trap – Are the ISPs trying to cheat you?

Most Internet users are not aware of this small yet significant difference, Mbit and Mbyte are two very similar terms but yet very different.

We are all familiar with Mbytes, used to measure amount of data, but what about Mbits? To explain the difference between Mbits and Mbytes we will have to go back to the basics of computers. Computers function and communicate by sending signals from one part to another, these signals are basically variations of the electrical current. There are two options, either there is or there isn’t any current flow. Absence of electrical current is mathematically represented as 0 and the presence of electrical current is represented as 1. This is how a computer translates the binary code. The binary code is used to translate any mark into an eight-digit string of 0 and 1. The eight-digit string of 0 and 1 represent one piece of information and it’s called a byte. Every 0 and 1 in that string is actually one bit. From here we can see why we use bits to measure the speed of communication and byte to measure amount of data. In addition, we will notice that 1Byte = 8bits or 1 MByte = 8Mbits. This is a huge difference, a difference that you must take into consideration when purchasing any type of Internet connection.

ISP’s use this difference to make their offers more appealing to people, however they are not breaking any kind of law, as bits are used to measure communication speed, and not just for communication but any kind of data transfer. However they don’t bother explaining that to an average user who is unaware of the difference unless he asks about it. If you have 8 Mbps broadband connection, you will be downloading 1MB of data each second (if download is being done at maximum speed) or 60 MB of data each minute. It is very important to remember that some ISP’s tend to present their allowance in GBytes rather than Gbits but that happens rarely.

We need to take the difference between Mbit and MByte into account when we are making a decision to purchase broadband connection especially when you are deciding on the size of your allowance. Difference between a bit and a Byte is quite large, since as stated before, 1 byte is 8 bits. This is a substantial difference that should never be neglected.