What is "bit rate"

n. (context telecommunications computing English) The transmission rate of binary symbols (‘0’ and ‘1’), equal to the total number of bits transmitted in one second sent or received across a network or communications channel, abbreviated as bps (bits per second), a measure of data transmission speed.

In telecommunications and computing, bit rate (sometimes written bitrate or as a variable R) is the number of bits that are conveyed or processed per unit of time.

The bit rate is quantified using the bits per second unit (symbol: "bit/s"), often in conjunction with an SI prefix such as " kilo" (1 kbit/s = 1000 bit/s), " mega" (1 Mbit/s = 1000 kbit/s), " giga" (1 Gbit/s = 1000 Mbit/s) or " tera" (1 Tbit/s = 1000 Gbit/s). The non-standard abbreviation "bps" is often used to replace the standard symbol "bit/s", so that, for example, "1 Mbps" is used to mean one million bits per second.

One byte per second (1 B/s) corresponds to 8 bit/s.