Italy adopts plans to shift into Internet fast lane

Italy's government adopted a six-billion-euro plan Tuesday to modernise its Internet network and improve access to broadband in hopes of shedding its reputation as one of Europe's online laggards.

Verizon boosts FiOS uploads to match downloads

Verizon is boosting the upload speeds of nearly all its FiOS connections to match the download speeds, vastly shortening the time it takes for subscribers to send videos and back up their files online.

Netflix's Comcast deal improves quality of video

Netflix's videos are streaming through Comcast's Internet service at their highest speeds in the past 17 months now that Netflix is paying for a more direct connection to Comcast's network.

Verizon launches wireless broadband for homes

Verizon Wireless on Tuesday announced a version of its wireless broadband service that's designed for use in rural and remote homes that can't get DSL or cable.

Israel sets sights on next-generation Internet

(AP) -- Israel is often referred to as "Startup Nation," thanks to its long history of high-tech breakthroughs produced by scrappy little companies. But in one critical area, the speed of Internet connections, Israel has ...

France pockets 936 mn euros in 4G frequency auction

France took in 936 million euros ($1.3 billion) from the auction of frequencies to build fourth-generation mobile telephone networks, telecommunications regulator Arcep said on Thursday.

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Megabit

The megabit is a multiple of the unit bit for digital information or computer storage. The prefix mega (symbol M) is defined in the International System of Units (SI) as a multiplier of 106 (1 million), and therefore

The megabit has the unit symbol Mbit or Mb.

Using the common byte size of 8 bits, 1 Mbit is roughly equal to 125 kilobytes (kB) or approximately 122 kibibytes (KiB).

The megabit is closely related to the mebibit, a unit multiple derived from the binary prefix mebi (symbol Mi) of the same order of magnitude, which is equal to 220bits = 1048576bits, or approximately 5% larger than the megabit. Despite the definitions of these new prefixes for binary-based quantities of storage by international standards organizations, memory semiconductor chips are still marketed using the metric prefix names to designate binary multiples.

The megabit is widely used when referring to data transfer rates of computer networks or telecommunications systems. Network transfer rates and download speeds often use the megabit as the amount transferred per time unit, e.g., a 100 Mbit/s (megabit per second) Fast-Ethernet connection, or a 10 Mbit/s Internet access service, whereas the sizes of data units (files) transferred over these networks are often measured in megabytes. To achieve a transfer rate of one megabyte (1000kB) per second one needs a network connection with a transfer rate of eight megabits per second. This can be confusing for internet users assuming the values are in kilobytes and megabytes per second. If one goes to buy a 2 megabit per second internet plan, they are really only getting a 250 kilobyte per second plan.

This text uses material from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA