Meaning – The term kilobit, refers to the unit of computer storage, which corresponds to one thousand bits.
One kilobit (abbreviated “Kb”) contains one thousand bits and there are 1,000 kilobits in a megabit. Kilobits (Kb) are smaller than kilobytes (KB) since there are 8 kilobits in a single kilobyte. Therefore, a kilobit is one-eighth the size of a kilobyte.
Before broadband Internet was common, Internet connection speeds were often measured in kilobits.
A 56K modem could receive data up to 56 Kbps. Most ISPs now offer connection speeds of 10 Mbps and higher, so kilobits are not as commonly used.
Example of usage – “While kilobits are used to measure data transfer rates, kilobytes are used to measure file size. Therefore, if you download an 800 KB file at 400 Kbps, it will take 16 seconds (rather than 2).”
