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You've actually got that a bit twisted. Not saying the bigger number doesn't benifit the ISPs, but it actually is the industry standard to use bits per second when measuring throughput. This is because data transfer is a continuous stream, whereas data at rest is chunked so when talking about storage we use bytes. It's a bit weird but you get used to it.
thanks for the answer, it would be nice if we just used a single unit, and it is annoying that both are mbps.
Ah, I see the confusion, and it's understandable. Look for if the "B" is capitalized or not.
Mb, Gb, etc = bits
MB, GB, etc = bytes
Think the larger letter is the larger size.
yhea, once you know you know, like the difference between pyrex and PYREX.
however, is still bullshit and designed to confuse people.
Right, and it's sort of a historical quirk, as well. You always need to compare your speed to what came before. That logic stretches back to computers that did not use 8 bits per byte, but still communicated over various channels to other computers.
And then there's just plain marketing. Not just that it makes the number 8 times higher, but that any one ISP that chose to advertise in MBps rather than Mbps would suddenly look like they're slower. It needs to be mandated for everyone as a regulatory rule or it just won't work at all.