This post will explain the exact gear and cellular service plan needed to pull off a reliable internet connection and live stream over a cellular network.
What kind of church would take advantage of this kind of setup? Primarily, we’re thinking of churches who are 1) portable, 2) unable to access a reliable internet connection, and/or 3) desiring to have a cellular backup for their internet service provider.
If one or all of these describe your church’s situation, then Churchfront is here to bolster your worship ministry!
Appreciate the guidance provided here? For a full in-depth look at live streaming for churches, check out Churchfront’s Beginner or Advances Live Streaming Courses. Here, we set up your church for a successful live stream setup from top to bottom.
Jake’s Story
A few months ago, our church started meeting in a small wedding chapel venue. We were told that the venue had internet, but we were not told how slow the connection would be. And frankly, I never foresaw this being an issue since we are located in a city in a developed country in the year 2020. But alas, after a frustrating first week of attempting to live stream from the chapel, we learned that the upload speed was less than one megabit per second.
Fun fact: It takes eight megabits to equal one megabyte. Digital file storage is usually measured in megabytes, but internet speed is measured in megabits. Therefore, it's always a good idea to have a lot of megabits to upload your megabytes.
The RAY Resi Encoder
In order to stream 1080p at 24 frames per second to our Resi encoder, we needed at least four megabits of upload speed. The problem was that we only had one megabit, which caused the major issue. And to play it safe, I wanted to actually see a minimum of 5 to 10 megabits per second of upload speed for our live stream.
The owner of the venue said that the service that they had was the fastest available from Century Link. It didn't make any sense, but I stopped trying to understand internet service providers a long time ago. The good news is that, fortunately, we discovered that there was a strong cell signal at this venue, at least with T-Mobile. So we purchased a cellular plan and bought an LTE broadband modem.
I'm happy to report that this setup has worked perfectly for us over the past few months. It's important to note that it helps that we've been using the RAY Encoder by Resi, so even if our cellular connection dropped out for a few seconds, our online viewers wouldn’t notice anything thanks to their resilient streaming protocol. And I imagine we'd have similar results if we used the new ProPresenter Resi plugin as a software encoder.
How-To
Does Jake’s situation sound familiar? If so, it’s worth giving this setup a try for your church. Here’s how to make it happen.
Test your cellular connection.
Purchase an LTE broadband modem with an RJ45 Ethernet connection.
Purchase a new cellular plan from a wireless carrier.
Plug the streaming computer into the modem.
1. Test your cellular connection.
Testing a cellular connection is easy. On any smartphone, navigate to Google in a web browser, search internet speed test, then run the test. At Jake’s venue with T-Mobile, his test read about 50 megabits per second down and 15 or 20 megabits up. That's plenty fast to run a live stream.
2. Purchase an LTE broadband modem with an RJ45 Ethernet connection.
The primary piece of hardware needed is an LTE broadband modem with an RJ45 Ethernet connection. There are many wireless hotspot modems available, but few of them have dedicated Ethernet ports that enable a hardwired connection into a computer or streaming encoder. The modem Churchfront recommends is the NETGEAR 4G LTE broadband modem. It comes with a power supply and a spot for a SIM card.
3. Purchase a new cellular plan from a wireless carrier.
The next step is to go to a wireless carrier and open up a new cellular plan specifically for a mobile hotspot. For example, T-Mobile offers the ONE plan for $85 per month, and that provides 20 gigabytes of hotspot data per month. This plan offers plenty of data for churches streaming one live Sunday service per week using four megabits per second of data through an encoder like Resi. Churches in this position will use around 10 gigabytes total of bandwidth per month.
So if a church is portable like Jake’s and its venue can't provide sufficient internet speed, or a backup internet solution is the goal, then this is a good move to make.
As always, the hope is that this content is a helpful resource for your worship ministry. If you want more resources, check out Churchfront’s YouTube channel and consider checking out Churchfront’s Beginner and Advanced Live Stream courses.