[TN1ck]

Be aware that it is bits, so 62.5kb. But I agree, the internet is still usable with that.

[happyopossum]

> Be aware that it is bits, so 62.5kb

Ok, I’m not normally one to be the pedantic bits/bytes guy, but if you’re gonna go and make a bit/byte “clarification” you need to get the annotation correct or you'll just confuse everyone.

It’s 500kb (small b for bits) and 62.5kB(capital/big B for bytes).

[umanwizard]

Shouldn’t it actually be KB or even KiB?

[mlyle]

People always use bits for connectivity. 62.5kB/sec -- maybe really 55-60kB/sec downloaded. Or 18 seconds to get a megabyte.

This is simultaneously fast (on my 14400 bps modem that I spent the most time "waiting for downloading", I was used to 12-13 minutes per megabyte vs. 18 seconds here) and slow (the google homepage is >1MB, so until you have resources cached you're waiting tens of seconds).

It would be nice if everything were just a touch more efficient.

[volemo]

Is Google homepage consisting of a text input field and like ten buttons really over a megabyte? Damn.

[NitpickLawyer]

> the internet is still usable with that.

We lived for years on 56kbps, granted the Internet was different back then, but we'd still "use" it, download stuff, etc.

[wat10000]

Unfortunately, the 56kbps internet was a lot more usable. I've been on 256kbps cellular connections (T-Mobile free international roaming) and it works, but it's pretty bad. Everything takes way more data these days, and nobody thinks about slow connections when writing software so there are a ton of overly aggressive timeouts and bad UI that assume operations won't take more than few seconds.

[namanyayg]

I've never heard bandwidth being expressed in bytes. But if we're being pedantic then I'd like to throw my hat in and call it 62.5kB.

Or even better, 62.5KiB (for kibibyte)

[volemo]

> Or even better, 62.5KiB (for kibibyte)

Well, we can’t know if Starlink’s marketing team used 2^10 or 10^3, and since it’d inflate their numbers I guess the latter.