It's a conflict between communications and storage. If you are doing data communications, you are probably dealing with phenomena measured in hertz. Those use S

It's a conflict between communications and storage. If you are doing data communications, you are probably dealing with phenomena measured in hertz. Those use SI prefixes, so it's natural to use them with bits as well. But if you are doing data storage, there are many natural power-of-two structures. Using 1024-based prefixes with them often leads to more convenient numbers.