In today’s world, technology has advanced far beyond the era when “bits” were the dominant unit for digital measurement. Yet, in 2025, many industries — particularly internet service providers and digital marketers — still use bits per second (bps) to advertise speeds, instead of the far more common and practical Bytes per second (B/s).

This outdated practice causes confusion, misinterpretation, and often, unintentional (or intentional) misinformation for everyday consumers.

We, the undersigned, demand that international standards bodies, consumer protection agencies, and commercial regulators mandate the exclusive use of Bytes for all public and commercial measurement of data sizes and transfer speeds.

Reasons for This Change:

Technological Progress Has Outgrown Bits

In the early days of computing, bits were a practical unit because data transfers were slow and storage was minimal. Today, with internet speeds in the hundreds or thousands of megabits per second and storage measured in terabytes, using bits creates unnecessarily large numbers that have little real-world meaning.

Consumers Think in Bytes, Not Bits

Everyday users download files measured in megabytes or gigabytes, not megabits. Mixing these units forces people to perform mental conversions (divide by 8) just to understand their internet speed or data usage — an unreasonable expectation in a commercial context.

Reduction of Misleading Advertising

Bits are often used in marketing to make numbers look bigger than they are. For example, “100 Mbps” sounds far larger than “12.5 MB/s,” even though they represent the same speed. Using Bytes would make advertising more transparent and prevent misunderstandings.

Global Standardization and Simplicity

In almost every other aspect of measurement, industries use the unit that people interact with daily (kilograms for weight, liters for volume, meters for length). Using Bytes universally aligns digital measurement with this standard practice.

Future Scalability

As network speeds increase to gigabits, terabits, and beyond, the numbers will become absurdly large when measured in bits, losing practical meaning for the public. Bytes provide a scalable, human-friendly format for the decades ahead.

Educational and Usability Benefits

Students, new computer users, and the general public will better understand technology if all measurements use the same base unit — Bytes — without the unnecessary complexity of converting from bits.
 
What We Ask For:

• All consumer-facing materials (ISP advertisements, streaming service bandwidth requirements, hardware packaging, etc.) must display only Bytes (MB/s, GB/s, TB/s) for data speed and file size.
• Standards organizations (ISO, IEC, IEEE) should officially recommend Bytes as the single global unit for public communication.
• Governments and regulators should enforce this change in commercial contexts to protect consumers from confusion and misleading metrics.
   

Conclusion:

The bit had its time in the early computing era, but today it is an outdated, consumer-unfriendly measure for commercial communication. By standardizing on Bytes, we can simplify technology for everyone, promote honest advertising, and prepare for a faster, clearer digital future.

Let’s make technology easier to understand — sign this petition to retire the bit from public and commercial use once and for all.