I have dispelled every attempt to squash a new method of understanding for the masses, good to know that people still revile at the prospect of change. Good to know its possible to rebel, even today in the 21st Century, in the 21st Century sector.

In reply to a post by tide:

Fibre optics are limitless in terms of considered data rates for domestic use, this is all about advertising for domestic use and so advertising would simply be diverted to the media services which came with the service itself. But before fibre optics will come the need for easier to understand speeds, which people can understand.

Companies have tried to measure things like MP3 album downloads, but that's going to be even less accurate than plain old MB (not that Mb right now is accurate). However if turning to a work colleague, in any environment but a technical one, the response will be a number like 12.7 then "m" and "b", some will know it to be Megabyte and some will probably think its Megabit etc... but essentially they will know a file is, so big, and then associate the advertised speeds with those.

Face it, no one really knows what Mb is in the real world and why its being advertised I do not know.

RUBBISH

Many many people know what a Mb is and in the real context of Mbps it is easy to define. If your colleagues don't know the difference between m and M then maybe they should go back to primary school and relearn their maths.

There are standards that define m, B, p, P &c along with data rates in bits per second.

In reply to a post by tide:

I knew you'd pick up on that.

Really? And after only knowing about this bbs (and hence me) for the last 24 hours?

A truly amazing learning rate...

Fiber optics are limited by the data rate of the tranceivers on either end, commonly 100megabits a second or 1 gigabit per second. They are infact not infinite, even the fibre itself will have limits.

Yes they do measure houses in mm.

The set of drawings for mine show my lounge to be 8200mm x 5800mm and 2700mm ceiling height.

You really don't have a clue do you. Try it, prove yourself wrong. Go into shops and ask people at random, ask cashiers, ask people at the bus stop, ask people on the train.

You'll get a very vague and varied response. But you won't will you, that's why I'm here.

In reply to a post by tide:

that's why I'm here.

No, it's why you're back again

No, its not. Nobody asks for a piece of wood in mm, or carpet in mm. The price of a house is measured in square foot and carpet is ordered in metres.

That is the real world, welcome.

I will get a varied set of answers because people don't know what they are talking about and have no idea of standards.

I will ask the first 10 of my colleagues I speak to later today: 1) what is the data rate of your broadband connection. 2) what is the normal unit of measurement of a file size. 3) Do you understand the difference between bits and bytes. 4) do you understand the prefixes used in the metric system.

Technology will see off limits to fibre optics, as we understand it more, you know this. But you'll also know, if you had been following the thread properly instead of digressing, that this is all about the consumer/domestic market and advertising to families.

Families have music collections, videos and documents.. all in the MB and GB range, this is what they know and what they are comfortable with.

Precisely why then advertising needs to change for this sector.