Our Internet connection service is typically priced based on the speed of the connection. The meaning of the word “speed” is different depending on the context. For example, the speed of a car is measured in kilometers per hour while the speed of water flowing in a pipe is measured in liters per hour.

The international scientific and engineering standard for measuring Internet connection speed is Mbps or Megabits-per-second. A “megabit” is a quantity of data (much like “liter” is a quantity of liquid and “kg” is a quantity of mass). If you have a 10 Mbps connection from PaNETma, it means that you can transfer 10 Megabits of data every second of every minute of every hour of every day. We typically do not limit how much data you can transfer in total per month (or per week or per day or per hour …) but the amount of data that you can transfer per second is determined by the monthly cost that you pay.

PaNETma uses Mbps to indicate the speed of all enterprise connections and residential/small business connections in some areas.

Internet Providers in Panama (especially Panama City) usually sell Internet connections with names like “up to 100 Megas” or “up to 300 Megas.” The word “Megas” has no widely accepted definition.

In the past, we advertised all our connections in Mbps. In recent years, this caused confusion as many people believed that “Megas” and “Mbps” are equivalent and could not understand why a 4 Mbps connection from PaNETma is much faster than a “up to 30 Megas” connection from another Internet provider.

While “Megas” are always slower than “Mbps,” there is no formula to convert between the two because each Internet provider uses their own definition of “up to” and “Megas.”