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this post was submitted on 12 Nov 2026
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Why wouldn't it be possible? Convert Mbit/s to a reasonable real-world mb/s estimation for download/upload to a reasonably close location, with some losses built into the estimate.
You’re asking why it’s not possible, and then explained a work around that would be needed because it’s not possible.
What you’re suggesting is that instead of selling a service to you based on a quantifiable number based on things within their control that you can reasonably hold them accountable for, they should sell their service to you based on a series of educated guesses about what you could potentially get based on a number of factors entirely outside of their control.
Elsewhere in the thread it looks like some ISPs do exactly that! Not sure why you are against the mb/s estimate.
Edit: thanks for the detail re: Mbit in your other answer!
I still think an estimate of Mbit/8 e.g. mb/s would still be a more useful thing for consumers to compare to the download rates they're actually getting.
The first speedtest I ever used was from the ISP and gave results in Mbit -- which confused 12 y.o. me because I was not getting anything close to that when I downloaded files.
If the speedtest said 1 mb/s and then I got 0.8 mb/s downloading from a server, I wouldn't call ISP support, but I think we did call support when the speedtest said we were getting "10 M" but our downloads were closer to 1.1 mb/s.