Go-Cast Enterprise
What streaming a church TV channel online costs in bandwidth, explained simply
Satellite costs the same whether ten people watch or ten thousand. Internet television costs more as more people watch. Here is how to estimate it.
In short: internet television is paid for mostly in bandwidth, which grows with how many people watch and for how long. Multiply viewers by hours watched by the data each hour of video uses, and you have the number that drives the cost. Unlike satellite, a small audience costs little; a large one costs more, but it is also a large audience.
The one calculation that matters
Total data = viewers × hours watched × data per hour. Video at a quality suitable for a television typically uses somewhere between several hundred megabytes and a few gigabytes an hour, depending on resolution.
Rough monthly data for a weekly two-hour service (illustrative)| Average viewers | Hours a month | At 1 GB an hour |
|---|
| 100 | 8 | about 0.8 TB |
| 500 | 8 | about 4 TB |
| 2,000 | 8 | about 16 TB |
These are illustrations, not quotations: real figures depend on the quality you choose, how long people stay, and how much of your archive is watched on demand.
What it means for viewers
The same data is paid for by your viewers on their own connections. On mobile data in Nigeria that is a real cost, which is why offering a lower-quality option, and an audio-only radio stream alongside the television, keeps people watching.
How Go-Cast Enterprise prices it
Hosting and bandwidth are part of the yearly service, sized to your real audience in the quotation. Go-Cast Enterprise is a dedicated deployment on your own domain: live video (IP television) and a video-on-demand archive, apps for Android TV, Amazon Fire TV, Apple TV, Roku, Samsung and LG televisions, and listener and studio apps for iOS and Android, all published under your ministry's name. It is priced by quotation.
Frequently asked questions
How much data does a one-hour church live stream use?
Typically from several hundred megabytes to a few gigabytes per viewer, depending on the video quality.
Is internet television cheaper than satellite?
For small and medium audiences it usually is, because there is no foreign licence, uplink or satellite capacity to pay for. The cost grows with the audience, so compare the two for your real viewer numbers.
Ask for a Go-Cast Enterprise quotation