Bandwidth Glossary Home The width or capacity of a communications channel. The maximum amount of data that can travel a communications channel in a given time, usually measured in bits per second. If you think of the communications path as a pipe, then bandwidth represents the width of the pipe that determines how much data can flow through it all at once. While, analogue bandwidth is measured in Hertz (Hz) or cycles per second, digital bandwidth is the amount or volume of data that may be sent through a channel, measured in bits per second, without distortion.   A full page of English text is about 16,000 bits. A 56Kbs modem can easily move 16,000 bits in less than one second.