Why Does My Phone Camera's Live Stream Stop After a Few Hours on Mobile Data? The 1.5 GB/Day Limit and the 64 Kbps Speed After It

You set up an old phone as a camera for the shop or the house. It streams to YouTube Live over a prepaid SIM. It works in the evening. By the early morning the stream is frozen or gone, but the phone is still on, still charging, and the data icon still shows 4G.

On many prepaid plans the reason is the daily data limit. On a plan that says "1.5 GB/day", the data does not stop when the 1.5 GB is used. It gets slow. This guide explains what that means for a phone camera, how many hours of streaming a daily pack really covers, and how to set up the camera so the important hours are not the ones that get cut.

It is written for budget and older Android phones on prepaid data, the usual setup in India, Bangladesh and many other markets. The plan figures below come from Jio's own help pages, read on 5 November 2026. Your operator and plan may differ, so check your plan's own wording (the next section shows where to look).

Why does my phone camera stream stop after a few hours on mobile data?

Short answer: the plan's daily high-speed data ran out, and the speed dropped below what a live stream needs.

Jio's ₹319 plan is a good example. Its help page lists the benefits as:

Data - 1.5 GB/day (thereafter @ 64 Kbps)

The words to look for are "thereafter @ 64 Kbps". After the daily 1.5 GB, the connection keeps working, but at 64 kilobits per second. That is enough for a chat message. It is not enough for video.

YouTube's own table of live encoder settings gives the minimum bitrate for an H.264 stream at 360p or 480p, 30 fps, as 0.4 Mbps (400 Kbps). That is the lowest row in the whole table. 720p needs a minimum of 3 Mbps.

So after the daily limit:

64 Kbps is 6.25 times less than YouTube's lowest H.264 minimum (400 ÷ 64).
If you also send audio at the 128 Kbps YouTube recommends for stereo, the stream needs about 528 Kbps, which is 8.25 times more than 64 Kbps.

The phone has not crashed, and the camera app may not have stopped. The pipe is just too narrow. What YouTube does when the incoming video stops or slows is covered in our guide to what happens to a phone's YouTube Live stream when mobile data drops.

How to read your own plan

Open your operator's app or website and find the plan details. Look for a line like one of these:

"X GB/day, thereafter @ 64 Kbps" — a daily limit with slow data after it.
"X GB, valid for N days" — a total pack. When it is used, data may stop completely until you recharge.
"Unlimited" with a smaller line about fair usage — read the smaller line. It usually describes a speed after a limit.

If the plan has a daily limit, also find when it resets. Jio's Data Add-On help page says:

If you are on a Daily FUP plan, the daily data quota is renewed at midnight (between 00:00 hrs and 02:00 hrs).

That one sentence explains a common pattern: the stream dies at some point in the night, and "comes back" after midnight. The camera did not fix itself. The quota came back.

How many hours of live streaming does 1.5 GB per day give?

Here is the arithmetic, so you can redo it for your own plan.

MB per hour = bitrate in Mbps × 3,600 seconds ÷ 8

At YouTube's 0.4 Mbps minimum, that is 180 MB per hour of video. With 128 Kbps audio added, it is about 238 MB per hour.

Daily high-speed data	Hours at 0.4 Mbps (video only)	Hours at ~0.53 Mbps (video + 128 Kbps audio)
1 GB	about 5.6 h	about 4.2 h
1.5 GB	about 8.3 h	about 6.3 h
2 GB	about 11.1 h	about 8.4 h
3 GB	about 16.7 h	about 12.6 h

These are the best case. They assume:

the stream runs at YouTube's lowest allowed rate, not the 4 Mbps it recommends for 480p;
nothing else on the phone uses data;
1 GB = 1,000 MB (some operators count 1,024, which changes the hours a little).

A real phone uses some data for other things: app updates, backups, the operator's own apps. So in practice the hours are lower. At 720p the picture is far worse: YouTube's 720p minimum is 3 Mbps, which is 1.35 GB per hour. A 1.5 GB daily pack is gone in a little over one hour.

The honest summary: a 1.5 GB/day plan cannot carry a 24-hour live stream. At the lowest quality it covers a night, not a day and a night.

What still works after the daily limit?

This is the good news. Two of the three things a phone camera does use no mobile data at all.

1. Recording to the phone. Writing video to the phone's own storage or SD card does not touch the network. At 64 Kbps, or with mobile data switched off, the phone keeps recording. Background Camera RemoteStream records with the screen off and keeps the files on the phone. Nothing is uploaded to a cloud.

2. Live view on the same local network. Background Camera RemoteStream has a built-in web server (the browser live view is a Pro feature, per the Play listing). Any phone or laptop on the same Wi-Fi, or the same phone hotspot, can open the live view in a browser. That traffic stays inside the local network, so it does not count against the SIM's daily data. If you are in the shop or the house, you can still look at the camera after the daily limit.

3. YouTube Live over mobile data. This is the only part that needs the SIM's high-speed data. It is the part that stops.

So when people say "the camera stopped at night", it is worth asking which of the three stopped. Very often the recording is complete on the phone and only the live stream to YouTube failed.

How to set up a phone camera on a daily data plan

1. Decide which hours need a live stream

Most people do not need to watch live all day. They need to watch the hours when nobody is there: the shop at night, the house while the family is at work or away. Stream those hours. Let the phone record locally the rest of the time.

With 1.5 GB per day at the lowest setting, about 6 to 8 hours of streaming is a realistic target. Choose the hours on purpose, instead of letting the limit choose them for you.

2. Remember when the day resets

If your quota resets around midnight, a stream that starts in the evening uses the old day's data until midnight, then the new day's data after it. Example on a 1.5 GB plan:

If you stream from 8 pm, and nothing else used data that day, the stream can run until midnight on the old quota.
After the reset, the new 1.5 GB covers the rest of the night until about 6 am to 8 am, depending on audio.
But the new day's data is then mostly used before the day starts. Anyone using that SIM for anything else will find it slow.

That is fine for a SIM that only serves the camera. It is not fine if the SIM is also someone's main phone number. Our dual-SIM guide covers which SIM to leave in a camera phone, and why.

3. Use the lowest stream quality you can accept

For a security camera, 480p at the minimum bitrate is usually enough to see that someone came in, when, and roughly what they did. The full-quality recording stays on the phone. If you need a clear face later, you get it from the local file, not from the stream.

4. Stop other things from eating the camera's data

On the camera phone:

Turn off automatic app updates over mobile data in the Play Store settings.
Turn off photo and file backup over mobile data.
Uninstall or disable apps you will never use on that phone.
Check Settings > Network > Data usage (the name varies by brand) after the first day to see which app used what.

Data Saver is the other tool people reach for. It does not block a foreground camera service the way many guides say. We checked Android's source code for that in Does Data Saver Cut Off a Phone Security Camera Streaming on Mobile Data With the Screen Off?

5. Know what an add-on pack buys you

If you need extra hours on a particular night, a data add-on can help. On 5 November 2026, Jio's Data Add-On page listed a ₹19 pack with 1 GB valid for 24 hours, and said: "In case you have an active valid plan then the Data pack will be auto-activated on expiry of daily data allocation."

At the 0.4 Mbps minimum, 1 GB is about 5.6 hours of video, or about 4.2 hours with audio. Prices and packs change, so check the current list in your operator's app before you rely on this.

6. If a phone hotspot is the uplink, the same rule applies

Some setups use a second phone's hotspot as the internet for the camera phone. Then the hotspot phone's daily limit is the one that matters, and its 64 Kbps "after" speed slows the stream in the same way. Live view between the two phones still works, because it stays on the hotspot's local network. Our hotspot setup guide walks through that layout.

7. Test one night before you trust it

Do this once, on a normal day:

Note the data used so far today in your operator's app.
Start the stream at the hour you plan to use, at the quality you plan to use.
After one hour, check the data used again. That number, in MB, is your real MB per hour.
Divide your daily high-speed data by that number. That is your real hours per day.
Next morning, open the YouTube Live archive and the local recordings. Check whether the stream stopped, when it stopped, and whether the local recording carried on.

Also check one thing about your own setup: after the quota resets, does the stream start again by itself, or do you need to restart it? Test it, so you know before the night it matters.

What this means if you are on an old 3G phone

If the camera phone only supports 3G and your operator has switched 3G off, the phone may fall back to 2G and be slow before any daily limit. That is a different problem, with a different fix. See Will an Old 3G Phone Work as a Security Camera on Mobile Data?

Quick answers

My stream stopped but the phone still shows 4G. Is the phone broken?
Probably not. On a daily plan with "thereafter @ 64 Kbps", the 4G connection stays up, but at a speed far below YouTube's 0.4 Mbps minimum. Check your data balance in the operator's app.

Did the camera stop recording too?
Not because of data. Recording to the phone's storage does not use mobile data. Check the local files.

Can I still watch the camera at home after the limit?
Yes, on the same Wi-Fi or hotspot. Background Camera RemoteStream's local live view (a Pro feature) does not use the SIM's data.

How long will 1.5 GB a day stream for?
At best about 8 hours of 480p video at YouTube's minimum rate, or about 6 hours with audio. In practice a bit less.

Do I need a cloud account to use the camera?
No. Video stays on the phone and there is no cloud storage plan. Screen-off recording is in the core app; the browser live view and YouTube Live are Pro features per the Play listing, so check the listing for the current free vs Pro split. The only data cost is your own mobile plan, and only for the YouTube stream.

Get the app

Background Camera RemoteStream turns an Android phone into a camera that records with the screen off, keeps video on the phone, offers live view on your local network through its built-in web server, and can stream to YouTube Live. Live view and YouTube Live are Pro features per the Play listing; check it for the current free vs Pro details.