A 2G only phone will be slow, but it will be able to make calls and send texts, though it won’t be able to access the internet as we know it. 2G service was the basic service that allowed us to have mobile phones in the first place. The G in these phrases simply refers to “generation.” 2G is the oldest tech, 3G came along a little later, and 4G is the current top of the line tech. When you buy a mobile phone somewhere in the specs it will tell you if it’s 2G, 3G, or 4G, or a combination of all of these. For example, it would take you 8 seconds to download a 1MB file on a 1Mbit/s connection.

There are 8 bits in one byte (and 8 megabits in one megabyte). However, download limits and files sizes are measured in megabytes (MB). As we have explained download speeds are normally measured in “megabits per second” (abbreviated to Mbits). Older 2G connections are usually specified in kbit/s.Īs speeds get faster, we'll start to see 5G connections shown in Gbit/s that's because the expected download speed for 5G technology is 1-10Gbit/s). Most download speeds are shown in megabits per second (Mbits) as these are the most common speeds we see and experience on a day to day basis. In terms of speed, this means that a 1Mbit/s internet connection is twice as fast as a 500kbit/s connection. There are 1,000 kilobits in a megabit (1000kbit = 1Mbit) and 1,000 megabits in a gigabit (1,000Mbit = 1Gbit).

200 kpbs (kilobits per second) is a lot slower than 200 Mbps (megabits per second), which is a lot slower than 200 Gbps (gigabits per second). Speeds of 1 kbps (1 kilobit per second) are crazy slow, whilst speeds of 1GBps (1 gigabit per second) are crazy fast. When we’re measuring speed we talk about how much data can be moved per second. 1000 megabits (Mb) equals 1 gigabit (GB). 1000 kilobits (kb) equals 1 megabit (Mb). You might be familiar with how data is measured, with abbreviations like kb, Mb, and GB, or even TB.

You’re going to be seeing a lot of abbreviations for different speeds, and it’s important that you understand them. Before we get into details we should start off by explaining some of the terminologies you’re going to come up against in this article.

Minimum speed requirements for skype