Comments on: Is Decatur Ready For Google’s Ultra High-Speed Broadband Network?

By: List of Cities Vying for Google’s Gigabit Project | zettaphile.com - BIGGER IS BETTER

Tue, 09 Mar 2010 06:58:09 +0000

[...] Is Decatur Ready For Google’s Ultra High-Speed Broadband Network? [...]

By: Kristian

Kristian — Fri, 12 Feb 2010 20:19:23 +0000

“And knowing is half the battle!”

By: Karass

Karass — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 23:21:56 +0000

Wow. I never knew this. Thanks!

By: Parker Cross

Parker Cross — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 23:21:43 +0000

Thinking about what an old bat I really am: It seems not too long ago that I was teaching a class to AT&T salespeople called “The Theory and Marketing of Digital Networks” and pontificating about how one day we could have 56k to the home. I expected we’d have flying cars by now, too.

By: Debbie

Debbie — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 22:49:54 +0000

Here’s hoping we get it!

By: Flaka

Flaka — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 18:09:58 +0000

So, you’re saying this is going to be better than my 56K AOL dial up!

Seriously, I’m a bit a techie, but am more than OK downloading movies, or video conferencing using my Clear Unlimited (approx. 6M/Bs). Big picture, I appreciate this is a good thing, but I’m thinking it’s not something the average person needs in their house.

By: Kristian

Kristian — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 18:04:48 +0000

@karass: There are 8 bits in a byte. A bit is a 1 or a 0. A plain text character is 1 byte. An example of seeing this in action is opening up a text file, typing a character, and saving it. The file size will be exactly 1 byte.

Lowercase b usually denotes bits while uppercase B denotes bytes.

1024 bits is 1kilobit (kb).
1024kb is 1 megabit (mb).
1024mb is 1 gigabit (gb)

A 128kbps mp3 file is 128kb of data per second of audio. A 3-minute song is roughly 23,040 kb, 2,880 kilobytes (KB), 2.8 megabytes (MB), or 22.5mb.

By: Kristian

Kristian — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 17:49:05 +0000

As Google put it on the page linked in the post:

“Imagine sitting in a rural health clinic, streaming three-dimensional medical imaging over the web and discussing a unique condition with a specialist in New York. Or downloading a high-definition, full-length feature film in less than five minutes. Or collaborating with classmates around the world while watching live 3-D video of a university lecture. Universal, ultra high-speed Internet access will make all this and more possible.”