Broadband bits and bytes

Sir, – Briain Smyth (Letters, May 15th) is mixing up his bits, bytes and ks!

In 1990, no-one was offering a dial-up speed of “1200kb per second”, equivalent to 1,200,000bps or 1.2Mbps. That’s just over a megabit per second and only a dream in 1990. I think you’ll find that the dial-up, narrowband speed at the time was 1,200bps on a good day. Likewise, there is no public network in Ireland today delivering a “120MB per second” connection, which is 960Mbps or almost a gigabit per second. I think a speed check will confirm that it is 120 megabits per second (Mbps) – again on a good day (and I’m not talking about the weather)!

At a time when broadband speed and connectivity are so topical, instead of minding our Ps and Qs, we need to watch out for our Bs, bs, and ks! – Yours, etc,

T GERARD BENNETT,

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Bunbrosna,

Co Westmeath.