What's a Megabit?

It’s a multiple of a bit, which is the most basic of computing units and is used for measuring the speed of data transfer. There are 1 million bits in 1Mb.

So, what could you do with 150Mb?

Download a TV episode in under 2 minutes
Download an entire film in 4-and-a-half minutes
Upload 100 high-res photos in 16 seconds

Mb, Mbps, MB

What’s the difference? Mb is Megabit, Mbps is Megabits per second, and MB is Megabyte. Megabit has a little ‘b’ (Mb) and Megabyte has a big ‘B’ (MB) – and they’re very different.

Bit means speed, byte means storage.

It takes 8 Megabits to make 1 Megabyte, which means that to download a 1MB (Megabyte) file in 1 second, your broadband needs to be 8Mb/8Mbps (Megabit/Megabit per second).

And the more Mb you have, the faster your internet is.

Still with us? This could help…

A 2-hour full HD film is about 6,000MB (Megabytes) of storage
If your broadband speed is 50Mb (Megabits) or 50Mbps (Megabits per second), you could download a film in just under 13-and-a-half minutes
If your broadband speed is 150Mb or 150Mbps, you could download a film in 5 minutes and 20 seconds
If your broadband speed is 900Mb or 900Mbps, you could download a film in 53 seconds

A Gigabit

There are 1,000 Megabits in 1 Gigabit (or Gb, or Gbps, or Gig). That’s 1 billion bits. Phew!

Here’s what you can do with 1Gb:

Download a TV episode in 18 seconds
Download an entire film in 40 seconds
Upload 100 high-res photos in 2 seconds

And don’t worry if this all sounds a bit technical. With us, it’s easy. 4 simple speeds to pick from and the more Megabits, the faster you go. 50Mb, 150Mb, 500Mb or 1Gb (average speed 900Mbps) – the choice is yours. You can check out our packages by visiting Broadband Deals.

If you have any questions, the quickest way to reach us is through My Account support request.