A kilobit per second (kbps or kbit/s) is a unit of data transmission equal to 1,000 bits per second.
Most audio applications are measured in kbit/s:
- 4 kbit/s – minimum necessary for recognizable speech (using special-purpose speech codecs)
- 8 kbit/s – telephone quality
- 32 kbit/s – MW quality
- 96 kbit/s – FM quality
- 128 kbit/s – CD quality
Kilobyte per second
Another unit of data transmission is the kilobyte per second (kBps or kbyte/s) and is one-eighth that of kilobit per second:
- 8 kilobit/s = 1 kilobyte/s
Confusion
One kilobit per second should not be confused with kibibit per second:
| 1,000 bit/s | = | 1 Kbit/s (one kilobit or one thousand bits per second)
|
| 1,024 bit/s | = | 1 Kibit/s (one kibibit per second)
|
Related rates
Base 10:
- bit per second << kilobit per second << megabit per second
Base 2:
- bit per second << kibibit per second << mibibit per second
