Megabytes vs. Megabits

Megabytes vs. Megabits

You’ll often see advertisements for internet or smartphone providers, promoting the fast internet speeds you’ll get if you switch to their services. Providers are cautious not to say megabytes or megabits. They’ll say something like “You’ll get (up to) 300 Megs per second.”

Megs is a nice name, but…

Now, most people automatically assume that when they see 300 Megs per second as the advertised download speed, they will be downloading at a speed of around 300 megabytes per second. Then the wheels start spinning… people start thinking…”Hmm, I can download a 2 GB file in less than 10 seconds…wow, that’s great. Sign me up!”

But wait. There’s something amiss here. You’ll seldom hear or read about an Internet provider offering fast internet speeds in megabytes per second and you’ll learn why all providers now seem to use the term “megs per second”.

Most of you know what a megabyte is, but many folks don’t know what a megabit is. Internet and cellphone providers know this and use the word “megs” knowing (I think) that most people will assume megs means megabytes.

Now let’s see why providers use megs instead of telling you the real speed they offer. There’s a huge difference between megabytes and megabits. And to explain this to you, we’ll defer to the experts at highspeedinternet.com …

Megabits vs. megabytes: Why it matters

These subtle differences in units make it easy to flub your math when dealing with your internet speed. If you happen to get them mixed up, your calculations will be off. Way off.

For example, let’s say you want to download a 500 MB file, and you have a 100 Mbps internet connection. If you don’t notice the capital B in the file size, you might estimate that this download would take five seconds. However, the units don’t match up. The file size is measured in megabytes, while the connection speed is measured in megabits per second. Since the file size is eight times larger than you originally estimated, it actually takes eight times as long to download—40 seconds.

Now, waiting 35 seconds longer than you expected isn’t too bad, but waiting an extra 35 minutes on a download that was supposed to take only five is more of an inconvenience. This can also be frustrating if you realize you’re paying for an internet connection that gives you a lot less speed than you thought…

So there you go. If your Internet provider offers you 100 megs per second don’t be fooled into thinking they’re offering you 100 megabytes per second, because what they’re really offering you is 12.5 megabytes per second.

And remember too that MBps means Megabytes per second and Mbps means megabits per second. When providers say 300 megs per second download speeds, they hope you’ll think megabytes per second. But when they use the term “megs” they’re almost always talking about megabits per second. So that blindingly fast 300 megs, is 37.5 megabytes per second – still fast…but not nearly as fast as you might have thought.

Now you’re megs-smart and the term “megs” won’t fool you because now you know what Megs really means.

If you have a girlfriend, wife, child, or grandchild named Megs, we can’t help you there.