FCC to propose a minimum 100mbps to qualify as broadband, with a future goal of 1gbps

spiritedpause@sh.itjust.works to Technology@lemmy.world – 1424 points –
docs.fcc.gov
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100 mbps? That's 100 millibits per second, or 0.1 bits per second. I'd certainly hope for better bandwidth than one bit every ten seconds; that's slower than smoke signals.

I wish we can all move to MB/s and get rid of the endless confusion on names

I say we split the different and go for nibbles per fortnight.

The reason we don't is because the network does not care how the files you transfer are formatted.

It measure the amount of bits it can transfer.

Whether the file in question is for example a text document (8bit) or a HEIF (10bit)

Mbps, megabits per second, is the standard. No idea why this author opted to use the highly unusual millibit.

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👆 Pedant.

I almost replied saying you had no idea you were talking about, but then I realized.... Lol

Except that’s like dividing by zero. A millibit is undefined. A bit is the smallest indivisible unit of digital information.

But capitalization is important to distinguish between b for bit and B for Byte.

No, that's like dividing by 1,000.

Anyway, computer scientists split the bit back in 1969, which is how we're able to make smaller and smaller computers: the bits are all smaller, so we can pack more into a single potato chip.

Information entropy is measured in bits, and the bits are almost always fractional.

Good catch but not quite. bps is a rate so it is allowed to be an abstract expression.

How many chickens per hour cross the road?

And more importantly, why.

If you had really slow Internet, like smoke signals or semaphores across a nation, you could characterize it as millibit:

1 bit over 1000 seconds = 1 millibit/s.

But yeah, it's basically meaningless in today's age for Internet speeds.

The title used the wrong abbreviation and you didn’t read the linked press release. The previous standard was 25/3 Mbps so there’s no reason to downgrade; had you bothered to read the link you’re supposedly commenting on you’d see the new standard is 100/20 Mbps. That’s also laughably low for a regular household with a modicum of modern usage but we can’t really expect much from agencies under regulatory capture.

They were making a joke about units and the use of a lowercase m instead of an uppercase M for Megabits per second.....

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