Mbps

Meaning

Mbps stands for megabits per second, a unit that describes how much data a connection can move each second. It measures capacity, not how quickly a single page opens, much as the width of a road says how many vehicles can pass at once and not how fast one of them goes. Plans are quoted in megabits while file sizes are shown in megabytes, and since a byte is eight bits, the file figure is about one eighth of the Mbps figure. See also: Bandwidth, Download speed, Latency, and the guide What Mbps Means: Download Speed, Upload Speed and Latency.