I mean, yes, but nobody streams RAW video in practice, and I can't imagine any users or service providers who'd be happy with that level of inefficiency. In general, it's safe to assume some reasonable compression (which, yes, is likely lossy).

It's quite possible for one broadcasters 480p30 to be a higher bitrate than another broadcasters 720p60

I remember watching the last season of Game of Thrones on one streaming provider, which topped out about 3.5mbit but claimed it was "1080p".

Give me a 15mbit 640x480 over 3.5mbit of 1920x1080 for that type of material any day.

> It's quite possible for one broadcasters 480p30 to be a higher bitrate than another broadcasters 720p60

Yes, I don't think anyone's disputing that.

> I remember watching the last season of Game of Thrones on one streaming provider, which topped out about 3.5mbit but claimed it was "1080p".

Why the scare quotes? That's a perfectly reasonable bitrate using modern compression like H.265, especially for a TV show that's filmed at 24 fps.