BSNL increases minimum broadband download speed to 512 kbps

State-run telecom operator BSNL has increased the minimum broadband download speed to 512 kbps from 256 kbps for most of its existing wire-line customers at current tariffs. BSNL in its a statement held that wire-line broadband has over 64% market share with more than 8.5 million customers.

What is kbps?

Short for kilobits per second, a measure of data transfer speed. Modems, for example, are measured in Kbps.

Here Kilo = 1,000 or Kilo =1,024 ?

• Note that one kbps is 1,000 bits per second, whereas a KB (kilobyte) is 1,024 bytes.
• Where, “b” denotes a “bit” and “B” denotes a “Byte”.
• 1 Byte = 8 bits
• Data transfer rates are measured using the decimal meaning of ‘k’ (i.e. Kilo=1,000) whereas data storage is measured using the powers-of-2 (binary) meaning of ‘K or Ki’ (i.e. Kilo=1,024). So, k- stands for kilo, meaning 1,000, while Ki- stands for kilobinary ("kibi-"), meaning 1,024. The standardized binary prefixes such as Ki- were relatively recently introduced and still face low adoption. K- is often used to mean 1,024, especially in KB, the kilobyte.
• Technically, ‘kbps’ should be spelled with a lowercase ‘k’ to indicate that it is decimal but almost everyone spells it with a capital ‘K’.
• So, it should be technically, “kpbs” for data transfer and “KB or KiB” for storage.

Month: Current Affairs - April, 2012