The etymology is that a “datum” (the plural of which is data) is something that is “given”.

So data is information that has been given.

In computers, data (information) is stored in bits (zeroes and ones). Eight bits are a byte, a billion bytes are a gigabyte, so the plan you describe allows you to download (or transmit overall?) 281000000000 = 16000000000 ones or zeroes that are used to encode data for computers (which they will decode into text, images, videos, whatever).