The amount of data Microsoft Teams call uses during a one-hour meeting can vary significantly based on whether it’s audio or video and the quality
In the best call quality settings
- One hour Teams Video Call uses 3600 MB or 3.6 GB
- One hour Teams Voice Call uses 68 MB
The tool calculates how much data and bandwidth is use by Teams for a one hour call. Use it to determine monthly usage.
Table of Contents
Table of Contents
Calculator
To use it enter
- Amount of time spent on meetings with Voice or Video (default time is one hour)
- Number of users
- Default value of 1 for a single user
- Any number (useful if you’re a network administrator looking to plan bandwidth requirements for your organization)
- Number of calls made (default value of 1). Use a value of 30 to calculate monthly data usage.
The tool will provide the total bandwidth and data used with the desired units.
Example Calculations
- One hour Teams Video Call consumes 3600 MB
- One hour Teams Voice Call consumes 68 MB
- The monthly consumption with one hour of video calling a day is 108 GB
Background
Teams bandwidth consumption depends on whether it is a voice or video meeting and the app settings. In this tool we have used Microsoft’s recommendation for the best performance settings.
Who needs this tool?
This tool can be used for many different applications
- To answer the question – what SIM card do I need to purchase when I’m traveling?
- Planning an organization’s network requirements. Is there a cap on the data provided and what should that number be?
Data Consumption vs Bandwidth
A question that comes up often is – what’s the difference between data usage, and bandwidth consumption.
Data usage as the term suggests, measures the total amount of data consumed when you’re using a mobile device (laptop, tablet, phone).
When you download a PDF file for example that’s 5 MB in size, the total data consumed is 5 MB.
The video quality can be reduced over a lower bandwidth connection and therefore the total size of the file corresponding to a video clip will be lower.
Units for data usage: kilobytes (kB), Megabytes (MB), Gigabyte (GB), Terabytes (TB).
Bandwidth is a measure of how fast data is transferred to your mobile device. A larger bandwidth number indicates faster data transport.
Microsoft provides requirements for Teams. The table below shows requirements for one-on-one audio and video meetings
| Meeting type | Minimum (kbps) | Recommended (kbps) | Best (kbps) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Audio | 10/10 | 58/58 | 76/76 |
| Video | 150/150 | 1500/1500 | 4000/4000 |
It indicates a minimum bandwidth of 10 kbps both on the uplink and downlink for one-on-one audio calls. For best performance the network speed should be 76 kbps in both directions.
For comparison the best video call requires 4000 kbps in both up and down directions. This is over 50 times the bandwidth required for a voice call.
Related Calculators
How do other applications compare when it comes to data usage and bandwidth requirements?
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