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.
Listing the bandwidth in bytes would be less useful because they still wouldn’t match the download rates they’re getting, but also your internet bandwidth would now be in a different format from every other networking device in your house. Paying for 125 Megabytes but your downloads only ever being 100-112MB/s is still going to prompt those service desk calls, and now going to the store and trying to buy a router would be more confusing as well because you’d want to buy one that matches the speed you’re paying for but now your bandwidth is in bytes but all the routers measure their throughput in bits and you’re right back to being confused.
If you’re streaming video from or to the internet and run into issues it’ll be harder to figure out what the problem is because your ISP bandwidth is in bytes but your video bitrate is in bits.
Changing one factor in your internet solution to bytes while every single other component involved measures it in bits is just not by any stretch of the imagination going to result in less confusion overall. You’re robbing Peter to pay Paul, but Paul is still being shorted.
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.
Listing the bandwidth in bytes would be less useful because they still wouldn’t match the download rates they’re getting, but also your internet bandwidth would now be in a different format from every other networking device in your house. Paying for 125 Megabytes but your downloads only ever being 100-112MB/s is still going to prompt those service desk calls, and now going to the store and trying to buy a router would be more confusing as well because you’d want to buy one that matches the speed you’re paying for but now your bandwidth is in bytes but all the routers measure their throughput in bits and you’re right back to being confused.
If you’re streaming video from or to the internet and run into issues it’ll be harder to figure out what the problem is because your ISP bandwidth is in bytes but your video bitrate is in bits.
Changing one factor in your internet solution to bytes while every single other component involved measures it in bits is just not by any stretch of the imagination going to result in less confusion overall. You’re robbing Peter to pay Paul, but Paul is still being shorted.