Key takeaways
- H.265 cuts video bandwidth by 40 to 50 percent compared to H.264 at similar quality, and AV1 is now mature enough on newer camera chipsets to do the same again. Most installations still default to H.264.
- Starlink Business in the UK in 2026 ships with a 1 TB Priority Data allowance. Cellular plans have their own thresholds. A typical multi camera site can easily burn through either if the cameras are not configured for the connection they sit on.
- The fix is rarely about the bandwidth coming into the site. It is about how the cameras encode the video leaving it. A short configuration pass per site can cut data usage substantially without losing evidential quality.
Most CCTV installations were specified at a time when the connection feeding them was either a fixed line that nobody really watched, or a 4G SIM where data was cheap and rarely capped. In 2026, the connection is just as likely to be Starlink Business with a 1 TB Priority Data allowance, or a cellular plan with a defined monthly threshold beyond which speeds slow at peak times. The cameras have not changed. The cost of how they were configured has.
This piece walks through where the bandwidth actually goes, what modern codecs can do, and how to fit more cameras through the same pipe without dropping quality where it matters.
The Bandwidth Ceiling That Keeps Moving
Starlink Business is now a mainstream option for remote and rural sites, as we covered in our Starlink and 4G comparison. The service in the UK in 2026 ships with around 200 to 350 Mbps download speeds and a 1 TB Priority Data allowance per month. Above that allowance, the connection still works, but it falls into the standard data tier and can be deprioritised during peak local demand. For a residential customer this is rarely a problem. For a CCTV site streaming continuously, it absolutely can be.
Cellular plans have their own version of the same problem. Unlimited SIMs usually carry a fair use threshold, and even where the data is genuinely unlimited, cell sites get congested at peak times. A multi camera setup pushing high bitrate H.264 streams 24 hours a day is a heavy load on any connection. The result, when bandwidth tightens, is dropped frames, frozen images and the kind of intermittent quality issue that drives complaints from the ARC.
Where Most Installations Are Leaving Bandwidth on the Table
The single largest source of unnecessary bandwidth on a typical site is the codec choice. H.264, also known as AVC, has been the default for fifteen years and is still what most cameras ship with out of the box. It is reliable, universally supported, and well understood. It is also significantly less efficient than what is now available.
H.265, also known as HEVC, has been mature on professional camera chipsets for several years. At the same perceptual quality, it produces a video stream roughly 40 to 50 percent smaller than H.264. Most modern Hikvision, Axis, Bosch, Hanwha and Avigilon cameras support it natively. The proprietary smart variants such as H.265+ go further still, by reducing bitrate intelligently when there is no motion in the scene.
AV1 is the next step. It is royalty free, comparable to or slightly better than H.265 in efficiency, and now appearing on the newest generation of camera chipsets and NVR platforms. Adoption on dedicated CCTV hardware is still narrower than on consumer video, but the trajectory is clear, and any new install specified in 2026 should at least consider AV1 capable equipment.
How to Actually Configure Cameras for Better Efficiency
Codec choice is the headline lever, but there are several others that compound on a per camera basis. The configuration changes below are routine on most modern cameras, and the cumulative effect across a multi camera site is significant.
Switch the main stream from H.264 to H.265 wherever the camera and the NVR both support it. Confirm the NVR and any cloud platform actually accept the stream after the change.
Enable smart codec features where available. H.265+, Smart Stream, Zipstream, WiseStream and the equivalent on other vendors all do broadly the same thing. They drop the bitrate when nothing is happening in the scene, and ramp it up when motion is detected.
Move from constant bitrate to variable bitrate where the use case allows. CBR is required in some regulated environments. Where it is not, VBR delivers the same perceptual quality at a lower average bitrate.
Reduce frame rate on cameras that do not need 25 or 30 frames per second. A car park camera that captures activity once a minute does not need a cinema frame rate. 12 or 15 frames per second halves the bitrate and is still well above the threshold for evidential quality.
Right size the resolution. A 4K camera streaming at full resolution from a tightly framed shot of a doorway is using bandwidth it does not need. Resolution should match the area of interest, not the camera’s maximum specification.
How Netcelero’s Analytics Make the Impact Visible
The honest difficulty with bandwidth optimisation is that the impact of any single change is hard to see in real time. You change a camera from H.264 to H.265, and the screen still shows a picture of a car park. The data is what moves. Without visibility into actual usage, it is easy to assume the change has not done anything.
The Netcelero customer portal turns this into something you can act on. The analytics layer shows data usage trends per site over time, so you can see immediately whether a configuration change has actually shifted the load. You can also identify the sites that are pushing the most data, which is usually a small subset of your estate, and target your optimisation effort there first. For installers running across dozens or hundreds of sites, this is the difference between a guess and a measurement.
The same data is often enough to take back to the camera vendor or the end customer with a concrete recommendation. “This site is currently consuming 1.4 TB a month. We can bring that under 700 GB with a half hour configuration pass on the four worst cameras” is a much stronger conversation than a generic suggestion to look at codec settings.
What to Do This Week
If you install or maintain CCTV on sites running over Starlink, cellular or any other bandwidth limited connection, three quick steps will tell you where to focus.
First, identify the sites in your estate currently using the most data per month. These are the ones where a configuration pass returns the most benefit for the time invested.
Second, log in to one camera on the worst site and check the current codec, bitrate mode and frame rate. In most cases, at least two of these can be improved without affecting the quality of the recording in any meaningful way.
Third, make the change and measure the impact over a week before extrapolating across the estate. The actual saving will depend on the camera, the scene and the codec implementation, and a week of real data is far more useful than a vendor spec sheet.
The bandwidth available on a typical remote site has improved out of recognition in the last five years. The way most cameras use that bandwidth has not. A small amount of attention to how the video leaves the site is one of the cheapest improvements available to an installer in 2026, and the data to prove it is already there in the portal.
Contact us today if you would like help running a bandwidth audit across your sites, or to see how the Netcelero customer portal can surface the cameras eating the most of your connection.
