Hotspot or Cell Phone Bandwidth for Streaming

Our stake center has a poor ADSL connection (we're lucky to get 2 Mbps up). The FM group has talked to the cable company about bringing in service and they aren't excited about how much the cable company wants to charge to bring service to the building.

I've seen some recommendations in this forum for streaming directly from a phone. If anyone is doing this how successful are you streaming from the phone and how happy are you with the picture quality? What type of cell phone service do you need for successful streaming? 4G? 5G? (I've watched some very poor quality live streams from a cell phone, so I'm a little hesitant.)

I've seen a couple of different apps listed for doing it directly from a phone. Are there any thoughts of doing that versus using it as a hotspot for a laptop or Raspberry Pi and streaming from that device?

Thanks for any thoughts.

You may want to check Webcast Network Health and Encoder Settings for how to assess the network and what you can get out of it.

In my case, while we're webcasting from a phone, we've been doing it over the Church WiFi. We could do it over mobile data, but we're avoiding that unless there's a reason to go that route.

We did have one building in the stake that was on 4G with Verizon, but it was really bad. MLS couldn't be used when people where in the building. Somehow, by persistent questioning of the vendors, we were able to get fiber into the building. (Until then, it was "can't do it".)

russellhltn wrote:You may want to check Webcast Network Health and Encoder Settings for how to assess the network and what you can get out of it.

In my case, while we're webcasting from a phone, we've been doing it over the Church WiFi. We could do it over mobile data, but we're avoiding that unless there's a reason to go that route.

We did have one building in the stake that was on 4G with Verizon, but it was really bad. MLS couldn't be used when people where in the building. Somehow, by persistent questioning of the vendors, we were able to get fiber into the building. (Until then, it was "can't do it".)

Thanks for the info. My motivation for the phone is if the mobile data speeds can be faster than our poor DSL speeds. I've seen all sorts of descriptions of 5G speeds, but I don't know what reality is.

mevans wrote:My motivation for the phone is if the mobile data speeds can be faster than our poor DSL speeds. I've seen all sorts of descriptions of 5G speeds, but I don't know what reality is.

Reality: 5G has to be in your area and you have to have a 5G phone. <grin>

Download "Speedtest by ookia" app and find out. I just ran a test on my 4G. 9.6Mbps/up with 5ms jitter.

I ran a speedtest on my 4G cellular data and I got 4.4 Mbps upload and 87.6 mbps download with 49 ms Latency.

According to Zoom system requirements, that is more than adaquate for 1080p video streaming.
https://support.zoom.us/hc/en-us/articl ... 5f3d184c6b

Our FM group has provided Cradlepoint LTE routers in place of DSL in several of our buildings. We're getting 12Mb down and 3.5Mb up. It's working great for YouTube streaming and Zoom meetings.